Author Archives: Remona86L

Indicted Ron Paul Aide Is Also the Target of a Police Investigation Into a Mysterious Burglary

by Remona86L Posted on August 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, a trio of conservative operatives with close ties to Rand Paul and his father were indicted for their alleged role in an effort to purchase an influential Iowa Republican’s endorsement of Ron Paul during his 2012 presidential bid. Mother Jones has learned that one of these operatives, Dimitri Kesari, is also a target of a police investigation into a mysterious burglary last year at the Rhode Island home of a Ron Paul staffer who died in 2013. All that was taken, according to local police, was the deceased staffer’s laptop.

Kesari, who served as Ron Paul’s deputy campaign manager during the 2012 campaign, faces federal conspiracy, campaign finance, and obstruction of justice charges for his alleged involvement in paying more than $70,000 to then-Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The burglary case involves the childhood home of one of Kesari’s colleagues on Paul’s campaign team, a young and well-known libertarian activist named Jared Gamble, who died in 2013 at the age of 26. Gamble had worked on both of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns, as well as on Rand Paul’s 2010 senate bid. He also had a connection to Sorenson, whose 2008 campaign for Iowa state senate Gamble had assisted. Sorenson eventually acknowledged taking money from both the Paul and the Michele Bachmann campaigns and resigned his Iowa state senate seat. He pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges last summer and is awaiting sentencing.

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Indicted Ron Paul Aide Is Also the Target of a Police Investigation Into a Mysterious Burglary

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Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs

by Remona86L Posted on August 26, 2014

Fossil Fuel

Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs

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26 Aug 2014 7:24 PM

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Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs

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Solar power, better batteries, and electric vehicles are the dream team of renewable energy. I mean, they belong up there with famous trios like Pavarotti, Carreras, and Domingo and Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney.

Now the green energy darlings are banding together for a three-pronged attack on Europe’s traditional large-scale utilities — and, according to a new report by investment bank UBS, it looks like they’re winning.

By UBS’s calculations, 2020 is the year that home solar and energy storage systems will finally wrest the power of economic incentive from Europe’s consolidated utilities that rely on coal- and natural gas-fired plants.

“Large-scale power stations could be on a path to extinction,” the report says.

UBS determined this tipping point based on average “payback time,” the period after which an initial investment begins to pay dividends. By the end of this decade, the average solar system installed in Europe, with a prospective 20-year life span, will pay for itself in six to eight years, according to Renew Economy’s coverage. In other words: buy eight, get 12 free. (Right now, payback time is around 12 years; by 2030 it could be as low as three.)

Throw in an electric car that charges at night, and household costs get even lower — though UBS admits electric vehicles will take a little longer on their road to world domin- ahem, I mean, ending our reliance on fossil fuels.

The incentives aligning to give renewables a leg up include carbon regulation and high fuel and electricity costs, but crucially UBS’s forecast did not depend on any government solar subsidies. (Subsidies would just get us there faster.)

Perhaps the key change will be a 50 percent drop in battery prices by 2020. Better, cheaper batteries mean more people will see the value of home solar and electric vehicles, which means more people will buy them, which means the costs of production will likely drop further. There’s a technical term for this, and one we don’t get to use often here: It’s a virtuous cycle.

Of course, traditional utilities will not go quietly. But this shift means that any plants retiring after 2025 will probably not be replaced, according to UBS. Utilities can keep some skin in the game by providing smart-grid infrastructure and covering the gaps in the distributed system with small-scale backup power generation. But gone, or going, are the days of traditional utilities’ reign.

And while UBS doesn’t mention anything about the U.S., this news should send a signal to governments and energy tycoons everywhere that the balance of power is shifting. As a wise man once said, watch the throne!

Source:
Soon, Europe Might Not Need Any New Power Plants

, ThinkProgress.

UBS: Time to join the solar, EV, storage revolution

, Renew Economy.

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Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs

Posted in Anchor, FF, For Dummies, G & F, GE, green energy, KTP, LG, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs

Timeline: A Short and Sweet History of Fake Meat

by Remona86L Posted on December 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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1896:

John Harvey Kellogg, a member of the mostly vegetarian Seventh-day Adventists, creates a peanut-based “meatless meat,” Nuttose, which becomes popular at sanitariums. He goes on to popularize cereal as an alternative to egg- and meat-heavy breakfasts.

Corbis

1931:

In his essay “Fifty Years Hence,” Winston Churchill writes, “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

1933:

Seventh-day Adventists found Loma Linda Foods, which makes some of the first commercially available soy- and wheat-based fake meats.

Loma Linda Foods

1967:

British scientists discover Fusarium venenatum, a high-protein fungus.

1981:

Oregon restaurateur Paul Wenner shapes leftover vegetables and rice pilaf into patties and sells them as Gardenburgers.

1994:

UK-based Quorn introduces fake meat made of Fusarium venenatum.

1995:

A struggling vegetarian food manufacturer called Turtle Island Foods sells 500 Tofurky Roasts. By 2012, 3 million have been sold.

1998:

Gardenburger sees sales surge after it airs a 30-second, $1.5 million animated commercial featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson during the Seinfeld finale.

1999:

Boca Burger ratchets up ad spending from $500,000 to $4 million; Worthington Foods (which acquired Loma Linda) pours $5 million to promote its FriPats and Choplets. Gardenburger boosts spending to $18.2 million.

2002:

Burger King introduces the BK Veggie Burger. McDonald’s, which sold nonmeat burgers in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and India throughout the ’90s, launches a US version the following year.

Quorn hits US shelves. The American Mushroom Institute complains that fusarium is not in fact a mushroom. Quorn later removes the phrase “mushroom in origin” from its packaging.

2008:

PETA offers a $1 million reward to the first laboratory to create a commercially viable in vitro “chicken” product by 2012.

2009:

The Cornucopia Institute finds that most nonorganic veggie burgers on the market are made with hexane, an air pollutant and neurotoxin.

2011:

A report that Japanese scientists were working on turning human feces into steak turns out to be, well, bullshit.

2011:

The New York Times claims the veggie burger has become “a bellwether for the American appetite.” Today, a patty of hickory-smoked quinoa and lentils costs $14 at New York City’s Blue Smoke restaurant.

2012:

PETA extends its lab-grown meat contest deadline to 2014.

Market research firm Mintel reports that although only 7 percent of consumers call themselves vegetarian, 36 percent report using fake meat.

July 2013:

Fast-food chain Chipotle introduces tofu “sofritas.”

Chipotle

August 2013:

Dutch scientists make the world’s first lab-grown burger from cow muscle cells, fetal calf blood, and antibiotics. In a live-streamed tasting, the patties are pronounced “close to meat” but “not that juicy.”

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Timeline: A Short and Sweet History of Fake Meat

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Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

by Remona86L Posted on May 10, 2013

Image: Loring Loding

Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously.

Yonatan Sunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part.

Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red. It’s really cheap because it’s really plentiful. And it’s really plentiful because of nuclear fusion in dying stars. Sunger explains:

The only thing holding the star up was the energy of the fusion reactions, so as power levels go down, the star starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes. Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping.

As soon as the star hits the 56 nucleon (total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) cutoff, it falls apart. It doesn’t make anything heavier than 56. What does this have to do with red paint? Because the star stops at 56, it winds up making a ton of things with 56 neucleons. It makes more 56 nucleon containing things than anything else (aside from the super light stuff in the star that is too light to fuse).

The element that has 56 protons and neutrons in its nucleus in its stable state? Iron. The stuff that makes red paint.

And that, Sunger explains, is how the death of a star determines what color barns are painted.

More from Smithsonian.com:

“Stormy Sunset at Moulton Barn”
Weathered barn doors

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Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

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