Geoff Dembicki, - The Tyee
Stephan: Here is the latest on the real estsate trend. I think the assessment is accurate as far as it goes, but it doe not address what I see is the coming trillion dollar crash of coastal real estate.
You’ve heard it a million times. The reason so few of us can afford Vancouver is because there aren’t enough new homes being built. This is the version of reality that real estate industry leaders and their political allies want us to believe.
But an investigation of the industry by The Tyee has revealed reality to be much more complex. Over the past six months I spoke at length with financial analysts, economists, industry consultants, realtors and many others to learn the true causes of Vancouver’s housing crisis and who is profiting from it. They were in broad agreement that real estate is at the centre of a massive realignment between our society’s rich and poor — and one that few leaders in the industry seem willing to publicly acknowledge. Here are the key takeaways from those conversations.
1. The industry no longer sells homes — it sells investments
Real estate has historically been a local industry. The people who buy and sell a city’s homes tended to live in that city. Yet that all began to change a decade or so ago. And one of […]
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SIMON CHAPMAN, Professor of Public Health - University of Sydney -
Stephan: A number of my conservative readers have written to admonish me that I am not telling the truth about wind power; that it is a major bird killing technology, so why don't I admit that.
Sorry folks, as with almost all conservative policy positions they are plausible only if you don't care about facts. Let's look at some actual data.
People who oppose wind farms often claim wind turbine blades kill large numbers of birds, often referring to them as “bird choppers”. And claims of dangers to iconic or rare birds, especially raptors, have attracted a lot of attention.
Wind turbine blades do indeed kill birds and bats, but their contribution to total bird deaths is extremely low, as these three studies show.
A 2009 study using US and European data on bird deaths estimated the number of birds killed per unit of power generated by wind, fossil fuel and nuclear power systems.
It concluded:
wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fuelled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh.
That’s nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated:
wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.
In other words, for every one bird killed by a wind turbine, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed […]
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Stephan: Acupuncture which developed more than 5,300 years ago is a classic example of an empirical science. That is a science created by meticulous observation over many generations that is then confirmed by modern objective research protocols. Here is the latest.
Credit: Silver Spring Acupuncture
The world’s largest randomised controlled trial of the use of acupuncture in emergency departments has found the treatment is a safe and effective alternative to pain-relieving drugs for some patients.
Led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, the study found acupuncture was as effective as pain medicine in providing long-term relief for patients who came to emergency in considerable pain.
But the trial, conducted in the emergency departments of four Melbourne hospitals, showed pain management remains a critical issue, with neither treatment providing adequate immediate relief.
Lead investigator Professor Marc Cohen, from RMIT’s School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, said pain was the most common reason people came to emergency, but was often inadequately managed.
“While acupuncture is widely used by practitioners in community settings for treating pain, it is rarely used in hospital emergency departments,” Cohen said.
“Emergency nurses and doctors need a variety of pain-relieving options when treating patients, given the concerns around opioids such as morphine, which carry the risk of addiction when […]
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Thursday, June 22nd, 2017
Ben Steverman, - Bloomberg
Stephan: Here is the profile of America in the new age of techno-feudalism.
Credit: Bloomberg
Around the world, the number of millionaires and billionaires is surging right along with the value of their holdings. Even as economic growth has slowed, the rich have managed to gain a larger slice of the world’s wealth.
Globally, almost 18 million households control more than $1 million in wealth, according to a new report from the Boston Consulting Group. These rich folk represent just 1 percent of the world’s population, but they hold 45 percent of the world’s $166.5 trillion in wealth. They will control more than half the world’s wealth by 2021, BCG said.
Rising inequality is of course no surprise. Reams of data have shown that in recent decades the rich have been taking ever-larger shares of wealth and income—especially in the U.S., where corporate profits are nearing records while wages for the workforce remain stagnant.
In fact, while global inequality is simply accelerating, in America it’s gone into overdrive. The share of income going to the top 1 percent in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last 35 years, […]
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Thursday, June 22nd, 2017
Benjamin Storrow , - Scientific American
Stephan: You have heard me say over and over that wellness oriented policies are always more efficient, more productive, easier to implement, nice to live under, and cheaper. A great deal cheaper. There are also always unintended, or perhaps more accurately unconsidered, benefits. Here is an example of what I mean.
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — This salt-caked fishing port has been flush with wind prospectors ever since Massachusetts legislators passed a law for massive wind development in the shallow waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.
Ed Anthes-Washburn, a local port official, estimates he gives five harbor tours a month to wind industry representatives. Planning for the industry’s arrival now occupies much of his time, alongside proposals to redevelop several old industrial sites and a Seattle-style fish pier.
“It started Aug. 8, the day the governor signed the bill,” Anthes-Washburn said, gazing out over the harbor here, where a mass of fishing trawlers, scallopers and clam boats formed a rocking forest of rigging and nets. “It’s been pretty consistent since then.”
States up and down the Atlantic coast are rushing to become the capital of America’s burgeoning offshore wind industry, hoping the massive turbines will breathe new life into ports mired by a shrinking fishing industry and a flagging industrial base.
Maryland officials last month approved renewable energy credits for two developments totaling 368 megawatts off their shores in a bid to transform Baltimore and Ocean City […]
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