Tuesday, November 28th, 2017
Stephan: I am always looking for positive trends -- as opposed to happy one-off epi-phenomena -- a distinction I am not sure everyone appreciates. Such trends are getting harder to find in the U.S., but I am beginning to see more and more of them in other nations. This one is a good news story about a little engine that could.
Geothermal energy plays a significant role, as does hydropower, wind, and solar in making Costa Rico a leader in non-carbon energy at a national level.
Credit: Shutterstock
Costa Rica may be a small country, but it aims high when it comes to clean energy. Back in 2015, it generated 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources for 299 days, and back in 2016, it ran for 271 days on anything but fossil fuels.
Now it appears it’s just bested its 2015 achievement, having run for 300 days on a mixture of hydro, wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar energy. This stellar record goes hand-in-hand with the government’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2021, a deadline that was set up more than 10 years ago.
According to a new report by the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity, (ICE), with six weeks left of 2017 to go, it looks likely the total number of clean energy-powered days will increase.
Carlos Manuel Obregón, the executive president of ICE, explains that improvements to the grid, and […]
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Tuesday, November 28th, 2017
Christal Hayes, - Newsweek
Stephan: America's gun psychosis is a psychological issue that has nothing to do with safety, although that is how it is usually discussed by the NRA and its adherents. How do we know this? Study after study has shown that guns in the house year after year cause more not less violence and death. Here's a new study that sheds some light on what may be driving this mental disorder that is so peculiar to the United States.
A selection of Glock pistols for sale at the Pony Express Firearms shop in Parker, Colorado, on December 7, 2015. An analysis published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week found that guns are used in more than half of the murders of women.
Credit: Rick Wilking/Reuters
There’s no doubt America is obsessed with guns. It’s evident by the jarring 300 million firearms available in the nation, but where does the infatuation come from?
Two researchers recently found that when examining men who are going through financial problems, much of their passionate views about firearms derive from a sense of “empowerment”—and they feel stricter gun laws are an attack on their masculinity.
The study by Baylor University sociology professors Carson Mencken and Paul Froese found white men who own firearms and have lost financial stability, or think they soon will, find moral and emotional solace in their guns. (emphasis added)
Other demographic groups, such as women and nonwhite males, don’t place as much importance on guns, the study shows. The professors also found that […]
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Monday, November 27th, 2017
Sherisse Pham, - CNN Tech
Stephan: There is a major trend, a major shift, going on in the world. We in the U.S. are trying to elect a child molester and teen stalker, so he can work with another predator, and his band of incompetents, who collectively can't think past the next profit quarter, who deny climate change exists, and are trying to keep us committed to carbon. Meanwhile the Chinese are committed to a 50 year program to create an "ecological civilization" and dominate the next wave of technology. Consider the following.
The Shanghai Skyline 2017
President Trump has made technology a key battleground in U.S. relations with China. He launched an investigation into alleged Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property earlier this year. But some experts say a bigger concern is Beijing’s huge bets on the technologies of the future.
The Chinese government is throwing its weight behind sectors like artificial intelligence, electric cars and computer chips, pumping in money to create tech champions with global clout.
Related: China wants to build a $150 billion AI industry
Western companies have already raised concerns about the plans, warning they may give Chinese companies an unfair edge at home and abroad. Some analysts have called for the U.S. to ramp up spending on technology research in order to keep pace.
As Trump prepares to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, here’s a look at some of the key areas where China is giving the U.S. a run for its money.
Artificial intelligence
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently predicted that whoever becomes the leader in artificial […]
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Monday, November 27th, 2017
Ben Guarino, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: We seem to be moving into the realm of myth, where the earth itself revolts against the ignorance and obsessive greed of humanity.
You would think Oklahoma would have taught us the lesson, but no.
The increasing rate of seismic activity in central United States, showing the location of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater before and after 2008.
Credit: Magnani et al., Science Advances, 2017
An unnatural number of earthquakes hit Texas in the past decade, and the region’s seismic activity is increasing. In 2008, two earthquakes stronger than magnitude 3 struck the state. Eight years later, 12 did.
Natural forces trigger most earthquakes. But humans are causing earthquakes, too, with mining and dam construction the most frequent suspects. There has been a recent increase in natural gas extraction — including fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, but other techniques as well — which produces a lot of wastewater. To get rid of it, the water is injected deep into the ground. When wastewater works its way into dormant faults, the thinking goes, the water’s pressure nudges the ancient cracks. Pent-up tectonic stress releases and the ground shakes.
But for any given earthquake, it is virtually impossible to tell whether humans or nature triggered the quake. There are no known characteristics of a quake, not in magnitude nor in […]
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Monday, November 27th, 2017
JOE ROMM, - Think Progress
Stephan: Across the world the transition out of the carbon energy is going faster than anyone predicted. At the same time the U.S., under Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is squandering billions following a 30-year period in which few new reactors were built building two new units that won't come online until after 2020, at which point they will be instant white elephants.
Credit: Patrick Pleul/dpa via AP
In one of the fastest and most astonishing turnarounds in the history of energy, building and running new renewable energy is now cheaper than just running existing coal and nuclear plants in many areas. (emphasis added)
A widely-used yearly benchmarking study — the Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) from the financial firm Lazard Ltd. — reached this stunning conclusion: In many regions “the full-lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear.”
Lazard focused on the cost of a power for a plant over its entire lifetime in North America, and how the “increasing economic advantage of renewables in the U.S.” will drive even deeper penetration of solar and wind here.
But Lazard also makes a key global point: It’s more expensive to operate conventional energy sources in the developing world than it is in the United States. So the advantage renewables have over conventional sources is even larger in the rapidly growing electricity markets like India and […]
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