Solar king and the Stalin of windpower

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clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Hermann Scheer has been described both as the "solar king" and the "Stalin of windpower" "Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, "And the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy". Scheer, chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy what has become known as "Scheer's law", German households and businesses that generate renewable energy can sell it back to the grid at more than triple the normal market price. "The key to it working is that consumers have guaranteed access to the grid at guaranteed prices," More than 300,000 individuals and small businesses have jumped at the opportunity in Germany, and the number is rising all the time. Scheer's family, whose house is powered by a windmill, is among them. Scheer's law has created whole new industries - wind power, which employs 80,000 people in Germany, and photovoltaic (solar) power, which employs 40,000 "You give people energy independence and you get social commitment

Hope Street Tool Seeks to Help People See Potential

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Hope Street Group — a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create policies that enhance economic opportunity — is offering a new way to measure the road to prosperity. Hope Street, organized in 2003, has created an online Economic Opportunity Index that seeks to measure the extent to which Americans — by race and gender — have opportunities available to achieve the American dream, and seek to identify the factors most important to improving opportunity in the future. The online tool allows users to display opportunity by race and gender and to change the weight of categories to see how opportunity can change if there are changes in education or unemployment. Hope Street receives funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which is dedicated to solving social and environmental problems, and the Omidyar Network, whose goal is to help create opportunities for people to improve their quality of life.

Fears emerge over Russia’s oil output

clipped from www.ft.com Russian oil production has peaked and may never return to current levels, one of the country’s top energy executives has warned, fuelling concerns that the world’s biggest oil producers cannot keep up with rampant Asian demand. The warning helped on Tuesday to push crude oil prices to a fresh all-time high above $112 a barrel, threatening to stoke inflation in many countries. Leonid Fedun, the 52-year-old vice-president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest independent oil company, told the Financial Times he believed last year’s Russian oil production of about 10m barrels a day was the highest he would see “in his lifetime”. Russia is the world’s second biggest oil producer. Mr Fedun compared Russia with the North Sea and Mexico, where oil production is declining dramatically The trend, however, has turned, with supply dropping below year-ago levels for the first time this decade, according to the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog.

Save Your Favorite TV Show

Off track but a little fun.

clipped from www.usatoday.com It's that time of the year again when flailing television shows need all the help they can get, which is where you come in. Take our survey and vote for the shows you just can't live without next season. VOTE:  Which shows do you want to see back next season? clipped from www.zoomerang.com Within the next few weeks the networks will determine which of this season's TV series will return next fall. Tell us — and the networks — what you hope happens to these shows. Please select "Keep," "Drop," or "Don't Care" from the tab under each show. We'll reveal the results later this month.

Rumblings of Calif. 'Big One': 'It's going to happen' by 2037

clipped from www.usatoday.com California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide quake forecast. New calculations reveal a 99.7% chance that a magnitude-6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97% vs. 93%. "It basically guarantees it's going to happen," said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Pasadena and lead author of the report. The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A magnitude-7.1 quake — much stronger than Northridge — hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused few injuries and no deaths. The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data.

Study to Look at Writing as Stress-Reducer Among Alzheimer's Caregivers

clipped from alzheimersreadingroom.blogspot.com A University of Iowa researcher is conducting an Internet-based study to see if writing about their thoughts and feelings about care-giving can be a strategy to help those family caregivers reduce their stress. Participants in the study do not need to be "good writers" or worry about spelling or grammar because it is the effect of the writing that is being studied.

House warming: U.S. takes ownership of $736M Baghdad embassy

As a taxpayer do you feel ripped-off?

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com It cost more than three-quarters-of-a-billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to build and has been plagued by construction snafus, but the State Department has finally gotten the "deed" to the massive new Baghdad embassy — the largest U.S. mission in the world. Today, the State Department got the the "certificate of occupancy" to $736 million fortress. That means late next month or early in June, U.S. diplomatic staff can start moving into 27 buildings in the Green Zone compound, which covers 104 acres, has office space for 1,000 and housing for several hundred. One measure of how much the embassy cost: It's equal to the estimated value of the New York Mets franchise last year. (You decide which is the better deal ...) The top U.S. ground commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, will have to wait to put up the family photos in his office, however. It's not ready. The compound was supposed to have opened last September.