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- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
An aerial/telephoto exploration of the Canadian Oil Sands operations. Two trillion barrels of oil in the ground. Pyramids of sulfur and coke. Lakes of oil stretching to the horizon. At $200k/yr, it's easy to understand how one might get roped in, gold rush style. - Clean energy will unfortunately be political
Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy, as revealed by ALEC bills and other PR documents. This morning at the World Renewable Energy Forum, in response to a (long winded) question about how we might re-frame the energy discussion in light of the unfortunate hay which was made from Solyndra's failure, US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu re-iterated that clean energy should not be a political issue -- that it's just common sense. That may be true, but it doesn't mean it will remain apolitical. As Pericles once said... "Just because you do not take an interest in - The Dangerous World of Underground Chemistry
A look at the increasingly outsourced world of underground pharma. Domestic black-market chemists handle R&D and distribution, and the actual manufacturing is done in China. Seems that way with everything. - Google Street View for building energy efficiency
Essess is doing drive-by thermal imaging in high density urban areas across the US, hoping to target possible building energy efficiency opportunities. Another company is using urban satellite imagery to choose the best rooftops for solar energy siting. Big Brother may be watching you... but at least occasionally he's got the right idea. - The Neapolitan Mob’s Most Dangerous Family
A character sketch of Paolo di Lauro, one of the Neapolitan Camorra's former leaders. Southern Italy it seems, like some parts of Mexico, operates with more than one quasi-state organization governing in parallel. A tacit negotiation between the official and unofficial systems, which sometimes erupts into violence -- ironically, at those times when the so-called "criminal" organizations have become weak.
- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
Twitterfeed
- Incredible photo essay on the Athabasca Tar Sands operations: businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-s… 4 days ago
- At a great talk about individual cities as the right scale for renewable energy systems innovation at #wref2012 1 week ago
- Heard rural Wyoming folk talking local Chinese coal/gas investments, hacking of their SCADA water system. I live in a @GreatDismal future. 1 week ago
- The tar sands have to stay in the ground. Stop the pipeline… again. And again. And again, if necessary. act.350.org/sign/kxl/ 3 months ago
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 4 months ago
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: politics
A Space Aged Hiatus
Like a lot of scientifically inclined technophillic folks, the space shuttle’s last flight makes me feel a little melancholy. I believe there are very good reasons to send people off world. If we are both lucky and conscientious then in … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged apollo, earth, exploration, nasa, politics, science, shuttle, space, technology
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Canada’s Tar Sands And Brazil’s Rainforest
An interesting moral/ethical comparison of Brazil and Canada’s environmental records. If we see fit to hold Brazil accountable for the state of the Amazon rainforest, then shouldn’t we also demand Canada leave the tar sands in the ground?
Posted in linkstream
Tagged amazon, brazil, canada, climate, oil, politics, rainforest
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Climate of Denial
Understanding American climate change politics by analogy with the World Wrestling Federation. The Carbon Lobby is the “evil” wrestler, scientists the “good” one, and the media plays referee. The kind of referee that’s always preoccupied with something outside the ring … Continue reading
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq. I don’t know who could possibly be surprised by this, but it’s both nice and horrible to have unequivocal confirmation. Goes a long way toward normalizing Donald Trump’s plan … Continue reading
Nothing will change until greens mount some primary challenges and collect some scalps | Grist
Nothing will change until greens mount some primary challenges and collect some scalps. I agree. I would join, give money to, and vote for a Green Party that was organized around this proposal. We shouldn’t get all Lawrence of Arabia … Continue reading
Cities and Revolution
Another thing that cities do is make revolution possible. Which is interesting to think about, given that more than half the humans now live in cities, many of them in relatively poor, relatively un-free conditions.
Understanding the Republican Party’s Reluctance to Invest in Transit Infrastructure
A great look at the geography behind the Republican demonization of mass transit. To a large degree in the US cities are democratic and the exurbs and hinterlands are republican. Since so much of our transportation funding gets funneled through … Continue reading
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Tagged cities, congress, density, funding, geography, politics, taxes, transportation, urban
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Markets and Morals
A good talk from Chautauqua on the interaction between markets and morals. Some interesting examples of morally ambiguous markets: countries paying one another to take on refugee acceptance obligations and the outsourcing pregnancy to impoverished surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India. … Continue reading
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Tagged chautauqua, economics, ethics, fora.tv, india, markets, philosophy, politics, pregnancy, refugees, surrogate, video
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Fluid norms or Meta-ideology
Steve Randy Waldman takes Krugman and the US left-of-center more generally to task for their implicit assumption that our national ideological stage is somehow not subject to being shaped over time. Casino games and sport have fixed rules. Politics does … Continue reading
Links for the week of December 9th, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
Posted in linkstream
Tagged architecture, cars, china, climate, coal, design, economics, energy, gm, government, history, india, internet, journalism, law, media, newspapers, nytimes, passivhaus, policy, politics, search, streetcars, sustainability, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, technology, transparency, transportation, usa, wikileaks
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