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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… 5 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: regulation
Colorado to preempt local regulation of oil and gas industries
(Fracking site close to Platteville, Colorado by Senator Mark Udall on Flickr) With the introduction of the Halliburton Loophole in 2005 the Federal government largely abdicated its role in regulating the water quality impacts of oil and gas extraction. Local … Continue reading
Is an Energy Transformation Afoot?
Almost immediately after we empowered Boulder to form a utility, a spate of articles appeared in the national press talking about the relative costs of coal and renewables, and the trends in those costs. There was Krugman’s Here Comes Solar … Continue reading
Xcel backing away from solar-thermal enabling San Luis Valley transmission
Xcel appears to be backing away from new transmission lines to the San Luis Valley. This infrastructure is required to implement the several hundred megawatts of solar-thermal generation that they proposed in their 2007 resource plan. Solar thermal is the … Continue reading
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Tagged colorado, energy, grid, infrastructure, power, puc, regulation, renewable, san luis valley, solar, thermal, transmission, xcel
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Boulder energy watchdog kicked out of Xcel dockets at PUC
Leslie Glustrom is to be barred from intervening in the Colorado Public Utilities Commission dockets. She’s been doing the kind of discovery and oversight work that the regulatory body and the Office of Consumer Council should be doing on their … Continue reading
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Tagged coal, colorado, cpuc, democracy, energy, leslie glustrom, politics, puc, regulation, xcel
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Links for the week of August 28th, 2009
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.
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Tagged activism, agriculture, amsterdam, apocalypse, archaeology, bbc, bicycle, bullshit, capitalism, china, cities, climate, communication, copenhagen, csa, cuba, data, denmark, design, dutch, economics, education, energy, film, fish, food, google, green, greewashing, holland, human, india, information, infrastructure, internet, islam, maps, monopoly, netherlands, ocean, oil, organic, peak-oil, performance, phone, physics, policy, propaganda, regulation, religion, santacruz, satire, sex, sustainability, technology, transportation, urban, women
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Links for the week of Jul 16th
You can also search or subscribe to my linkstream over at Delicious. Wal-Mart To Become Green Umpire – Wal-Mart arguably has more control over and insight into its supply chain than any other company on earth. The information they need … Continue reading
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Tagged business, capitalism, children, design, diy, economy, education, programming, python, regulation, research, science, sustainability, technology, transparency, walmart
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Shared Links for Apr 10th
Losing $63 Billion to Gray Market – P&G sells the same bleach and diapers to distributors in the US and Honduras, at wildly different prices. Enterprising Central American businessmen then re-ship goods to US making a tidy profit. This is … Continue reading
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Tagged bailout, banking, economics, finance, internet, media, moyers, police, policy, politics, probability, regulation, security, surveillance, taleb, technology, terrorism, trade, transparency
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Shared Links for Fri, Feb 6th, 2009 through Sat, Feb 7th, 2009
These are my links for Fri, Feb 6th, 2009 through Sat, Feb 7th, 2009:
- Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change – Guidelines from the Brookings Institute for the US and China to cooperatively address climate change and clean energy issues, without being combative. Executive summary sounds good, whole thing is 80 pages long. Given the positive economics for many energy efficiency measures, I thought there should have been a little more focus on the often erroneous assumption that addressing these issues has to be costly. (tagged: energy sustainability china policy climate efficiency brookings )
- Amendment to Eliminate Bike Infrastructure in Stimulus – DeMint (R – SC) and Coburn (R – OK) are trying to kill all bike infrastructure investment in the stimulus package. Call them and your own senators and make sure it doesn't happen! (tagged: politics bicycle infrastructure policy transportation stimulus )
- The Transparent Society – The essay that later became Brin's book of the same name, in which he argues that first, universal surveillance is coming, whether we like it or not, and second, that a world which is transparent – in which surveillance goes both (all) ways, is vastly preferable to one in which the illusion of privacy is maintained, and the powerful are the only ones with access to our information. (tagged: technology privacy transparency surveillance brin wired )
- Make Love Not Porn – Hardcore (esp. internet) porn has unfortunately come (ha!) to substitute for sex-ed in our culture, so says Cindy Gallop. I think she has a point. And so she made this website, to try and point out the flawed generalizations that one might arrive at from being "educated" by online porn. I think it's worth noting also though, that the diversity of pornography on the web has steadily increased over time, and there's a lot of positive and realistic, and non-exploitive depiction of sex out there now, if you want to look for it. In particular Abby Winters, Beautiful Agony, and I Shot Myself come to mind. It's ironic (absurd?) that the site has an "18+ only" clickthrough on the front page. (tagged: porn sex love ted education )
- Dept. of Energy to draft energy efficiency rules… 30 years late. – I can't believe I'd never heard of this. Apparently for the last 30 years, presidents have been refusing to direct the Dept. of Energy to draft enforceable energy efficiency regulations, despite being directed under law to do so by Congress. Finally in 2005, 14 states sued, and won, and Bush still failed to comply in a timely manner. How many other instances of the executive branch (both democrat and republican!) completely ignoring Congress on important issues are there? It's rare enough that Congress gets anything right – that the president should ignore them when they do is unconscionable! (tagged: politics policy energy nytimes green efficiency standards regulation )
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Tagged bicycle, brin, brookings, china, climate, education, efficiency, energy, green, infrastructure, love, nytimes, policy, politics, porn, privacy, regulation, sex, standards, stimulus, surveillance, sustainability, technology, ted, transparency, transportation, wired
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