Tag Archives: group

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 23, 2013

Mother Jones

A team of U.S. Army AH-64D Apaches from the 1-151 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, S.C. National Guard, take off from Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla., as part of an integrated live fire exercise with the U.S. Navy George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, December 16, 2013. While working with the Navy for this exercise, the 1-151 ARB mission was to find, fix and destroy small boat targets. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Capt. Jamie Delk)

This article is from:

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 23, 2013

Posted in Delk, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 23, 2013

Today’s Senate Hearing: E15 and GHGs

back

Today’s Senate Hearing: E15 and GHGs

Posted 11 December 2013 in

National

Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is holding a hearing on the Renewable Fuel Standard and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal that would lower the amount of renewable fuel in the nation’s fuel supply next year.

Representatives from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) plan to cite a number of bogus and debunked studies related to E15 and greenhouse gas emissions in their testimony.

Here’s what you need to know:

E15 Safety

Either you can trust the 43 studies that show E15 does not show differences in “any performance category” when compared to the gasoline that nearly all drivers use today, or you can chose to believe the single study – funded by the American Petroleum Industry – that claims E15 damages car engines.

GHG Emissions

Either you can trust Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University, the University of Nebraska, Michigan State University,Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Duke University, and the University of Illinois-Chicago–all institutions that have published work in just the past few years documenting the GHG benefits of ethanol compared to oil, or you can chose to believe a 2008 report that shows renewable fuel is worse than oil based on hypothetical emissions that have been shown to be overblown by at least nine more recent studies.

 

Fuels America News & Stories

Fuels
More – 

Today’s Senate Hearing: E15 and GHGs

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Today’s Senate Hearing: E15 and GHGs

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle – Tom Venuto

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

Transform Your Body Forever Using the Secrets of the Leanest People in the World

Tom Venuto

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: December 10, 2013

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Seller: Random House, LLC


A no-nonsense plan that has been proven and tested by more than 300,000 people in 154 countries. Whether you want to shed 10 pounds or 100, whether you want to build muscle or just look more toned, this book is the original “bible of fitness” that shows you how to get permanent results the safe, healthy, and natural way. Do you want to shed fat and sculpt a new body shape at the same time? Do you want a program without gimmicks, hype, or quick fixes? Do you want a program guaranteed to work, no matter how old you are or what kind of shape you’re in now? For twenty-five years, industry veteran and bestselling author Tom Venuto has built a reputation as one of the world’s most respected fat-loss experts. In Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle —known by fans as “the bible of fat loss”—Tom reveals the body transformation secrets of the leanest people in the world. This is not a diet and it’s not just a weight-loss program; this is a breakthrough system to change your life and get you leaner, stronger, fitter, and healthier with the latest discoveries in exercise and nutrition science. Inside, you’ll discover: – The simple but powerful LEAN formula, revealing the four crucial elements of body transformation success. – The New Body 28 (TNB-28): a four-week training plan for sculpting lean muscle, plus a quick start primer workout perfect for beginners – A lifestyle program that’s more flexible and easier than ever to follow, even if you are busy, have dietary restrictions, or have never worked out before. – The motivation strategies it takes to stick with your plan. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is not about getting as ripped as a fitness model or becoming a bodybuilder like Tom did (unless you want to); it’s about using their secrets to achieve your own personal goals. You are sure to call it your fitness bible for many years to come. From the Hardcover edition.

See more here:  

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle – Tom Venuto

Posted in alo, Crown, FF, GE, ONA, oven, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle – Tom Venuto

The Gates Foundation’s Hypocritical Investments

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With an endowment larger than all but four of the world’s largest hedge funds, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is easily one of the most powerful charities in the world. According to its website, the organization “works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives.” So how do the investments of the foundation’s $36 billion investing arm, the Gates Foundation Trust, match up to its mission? We dug into the group’s recently released 2012 tax returns to find out.

The Gates Foundation did not respond to requests for comment; however, its investment policy says the the trust’s managers “consider other issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation’s work.”

In its most recent annual report to investors, private prison company GEO group listed some risks to its bottom line, including “reductions in crime rates” that “could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences,” along with immigration reform and the decriminalization of drugs. Military contractor DynCorp, meanwhile, has faced allegations of fraud, mismanagement, and even slavery from the Middle East to Eastern Europe.

Link: 

The Gates Foundation’s Hypocritical Investments

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Gates Foundation’s Hypocritical Investments

Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>


Gay people recruit small children in public schools and S&M accidents are a leading cause of death in San Francisco, according to a 1985 newsletter from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the national, corporate-funded conservative group best known for pushing stand your ground laws and union-busting bills.

The report was dug up and highlighted by the liberal watchdog group People For the American Way, which is organizing a protest of this week’s ALEC conference in Washington, DC. Titled “Homosexuals: Just Another Minority Group?,” the report reads today like the script for a bizarre nature channel program on gay people. In it, ALEC outlines six primary types of gay people: “the blatant”; “the secret lifer”; “the desperate”; “the adjusted”; “the bisexual”; and “the situational.” (The “blatant” homosexual “is the obvious ‘limp-wristed’ individual who typifies stereotype of the ‘average’ homosexual.”)

According to the report, 10 percent of all homicides in San Francisco at one point in the 1980s were “a result of S&M accidents among homosexuals.”

The newsletter also serves as a cheat-sheet for gay men or women looking to meet like-minded people. “If a bar scene is preferred, the ‘Gayellow Pages,’ helps the homosexual find appropriate meeting places for socializing with other homosexuals,” the report says. If that doesn’t work, the newsletter discusses “public restrooms” and “massage parlors” as havens for “the desperate homosexual.” Gay people even had their own language: “The homosexual’s vocabulary is another part of their culture that separates them from the heterosexual mainstream.”

The ALEC newsletter asserted that homosexuality was not only a choice (“the homosexual makes the conscious choice to pursue members of his/her own sex”), but one that its practitioners often came to regret. “Tom Minnery, who writes for Christianity Today, has written about homosexuals forsaking their homosexuality upon becoming Christian,” the newsletter notes. “He says, ‘the fact is, many people are experiencing deliverance from homosexuality. The evidence is too great to deny it.'”

But those who refused to abandon their homosexual urges were a risk to public health and children, according to ALEC. “Whatever the type of homosexual, one of the more dominant practices within the homosexual world is pedophilia, the fetish for young children,” warned the newsletter. The reason for this was simple. “What is important to remember here is the fact that homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves biologically so they must recruit the young.” And gay people came at a significant cost to the taxpayers, in the form of research for infectious diseases and tax-exempt status for LGBT non-profits. “In addition to federal funding of AIDS research, the federal government has been active in funding the homosexual movement.”

The report even took aim at the early stages of gay-rights legislation, which the ALEC newsletter warned would force conservatives into uncomfortable and perhaps dangerous situations. Under new anti-discrimination laws for some public employees, “parents will no longer be able to keep their children out from under the tutelage of homosexuals.” Bans on LGBT discrimination in housing would mean “Landlords will be forced to rent their property to a homosexual couple even if the landlord’s family shares the same building.” But the most ominous piece legislation concerned a proposal to end LGBT discrimination in immigration: “This bill would permit known homosexuals from other countries to become citizens of the U.S.”

The horror.

Originally from:  

Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

Climate negotiators are like Nazis, says this helpful, industry-funded group

Climate negotiators are like Nazis, says this helpful, industry-funded group

Mario Agati

Meet the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. There must have been some kind of mixup when the group’s name was registered — it’s not actually a committee for a constructive tomorrow. It’s a $3 million-a-year climate-denying group funded by the likes of ExxonMobil to try to convince the world that climate change is no big deal. (Its latest “special report” extolls the virtues of pumping more carbon dioxide, a.k.a. “the gas of life,” into the atmosphere.)

So, that’s a bit confusing.

Anyway, to help you to get to know this 28-year-old Washington, D.C.-based group a little bit better, here are some excerpts from a fundraising email signed by its President David Rothbard while United Nations climate talks were underway in Warsaw, Poland:

I had the unbelievably sober experience of visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau and seeing places where human brutality and oppression showed their most horrible face. …

[S]uch examples from history are instructive to show just how far otherwise-civilized people can descend when they are gripped by false ideologies and twisted utopian ambitions.

They reveal the loss of freedom, taken to its ugliest level.

Right now, the UN is attempting to carry out what its climate chief last year termed “a complete economic transformation of the world.”

That’s why CFACT needs your help right away as we finish out the last days of this conference.

To uncover, expose, and help stop the UN’s pseudo-scientific, redistributionist agenda.

To be fair, Rothbard did write that there “simply is no parallel” to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps — right before drawing a parallel between the U.N. and the Nazis.

So, that’s what CFACT is all about. Aren’t you glad we introduced you?


Source
UN to transform world’s economy?, CFACT

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Source: 

Climate negotiators are like Nazis, says this helpful, industry-funded group

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate negotiators are like Nazis, says this helpful, industry-funded group

Fracking boom is fueling a plastics boom

Fracking boom is fueling a plastics boom

nrt

Plastic crap that Americans are accustomed to importing from Asia is increasingly being manufactured right here in the U.S. — all thanks to the country’s crappy fracking boom.

Chemical and plastics companies use natural gas as a raw material, and now they can get it cheaply in the U.S. As Living on Earth reports, “The fracking boom has led to renaissance for the chemical industry, particularly for plastics makers in Louisiana, where the plants are major employers.”

Other states are seeing growth in the plastics business too. Asia’s largest chemical producer, Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group, has announced that it’s planning to spend $2 billion expanding its manufacturing operations in Texas. Bloomberg reports:

“Because of shale gas, the cost of making petrochemical and plastic-related products is becoming very competitive here in the United States,” [Formosa Vice Chair Susan] Wang said. “It’s probably as cost effective as in the Middle East.” …

Wang said the Taipei-based company expects to receive the environmental permits for an expansion at its Point Comfort facility, about 125 miles southwest of Houston, sometime within the next year. Construction can begin immediately thereafter, she said. …

U.S. shale gas and oil will replace naphtha in the production of basic chemicals as their costs are lower, [said] Simon Liu, vice president at Yuanta Securities Investment Trust Co., which oversees [$10 billion] of assets and holds shares of Formosa Plastic Group companies.

“Investing in U.S. petrochemical plants is the right move,” Liu said.

This isn’t the first questionable manufacturing boom to be fueled by fracking. Ammonia factories are also being built and expanded to take advantage of cheap natural gas.


Source
Fracking Boosts Plastic Production, Living on Earth
Chemicals Maker’s $2 Billion U.S. Bet Driven by Fracked Gas, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Taken from – 

Fracking boom is fueling a plastics boom

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fracking boom is fueling a plastics boom

Could This New "Church" Make Atheism Cool?

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last Tuesday in the basement of a bar in San Francisco’s Financial District, more than 50 people united to celebrate the universe’s godlessness. The group—mostly white, mostly hipster, and one kilt-wearer—congregated over drinks as pop-electronica played in the background. It was San Francisco’s first-ever gathering of the Sunday Assembly, a recently formed organization of atheists who want to participate in “all the best bits of church” but without the believing in God part, according to the Assembly’s co-founder and event facilitator, British comedian Sanderson Jones.

The only prayers to be heard at the event were during a karaoke-style sing-along to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Later in the evening came a YouTube viewing of Carl Sagan’s atheist anthem, “Pale Blue Dot.”

The Assembly was the idea of Jones, who wore a plaid shirt, a long, scruffy beard and and thick-framed black aviator glasses to the meeting, and his friend and fellow British comic, Pippa Evans, who wasn’t in attendance. The two founded the Assembly to create a global community based on the belief that “we are born from nothing and go to nothing,” according to the group’s website. The Assembly—which has been called by Salon and Time an ‘atheist mega-church’—is currently traveling around the world on its road show. The meetings have already attracted hundreds of attendees and a barrage of media coverage.

Sanderson says that the group has already gotten some flack from “fundamentalist, evangelical” atheists, as he put it, who’ve told him “the way we don’t believe in God is not the right way to not believe in God.” There is some evidence that atheism is becoming slightly more popular in the United States: In 2012 an estimated 2.4 percent of Americans said they were atheists, up from 1.6 percent in 2007. However, according to the Pew Research Center, the meaning of the word atheist is a source of confusion: Although ‘atheist’ is defined as a person who does not believe in God, “14 percent of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit.”

Although San Francisco’s Sunday Assembly did have some serious moments—including a speech by Pixar’s Daniel McCoy about how, like science, storytelling can reveal truth—the overall tone was light and tailored to the crowd, with plenty of Twitter and tech jokes. Sanderson and Evans believe that Sunday Assembly’s tongue-in-cheek tone is part of what will attract followers. At one point during their crowd-funding campaign video, the duo assures viewers that Kool-Aid will not be involved and that “It’s not a cult!” Though, they admit while wearing togas and carrying large glasses of wine, “That’s exactly what we’d say if it were a cult.”

Visit site:

Could This New "Church" Make Atheism Cool?

Posted in alo, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Could This New "Church" Make Atheism Cool?

Look who’s eating your plastic now: A whole unprecedented ecosystem

Look who’s eating your plastic now: A whole unprecedented ecosystem

Environmental Science and TechnologyYum, plastic.

We already knew that barnacles, lanternfish, and whales have been gobbling up plastic. It turns out that the problem is even bigger than we thought — because it is much, much smaller. Welcome to the “plastisphere,” the tiny plastic-based ecosystem developing within the world’s oceans.

The alien-sounding title is fitting, as scientists have found more than 1,000 species of microbes living there, some of which still have not been identified. The group of organisms supported by the plastic was significantly different from, and much more diverse than, other microbial communities in the ocean, suggesting that the plastic particles are providing a haven for microbes that otherwise might not survive, or even arise in the first place.

The study, done by a team in Woods Hole, Mass., took a high-resolution look at plastic particles between 1 and 5 millimeters in size (I believe the unscientific term is “itty bitty specks”). The critters camped out on them are even tinier, but taken together act as a full-blown ecosystem, not unlike a coral reef. Plant-like microbes cluster at the giving end of the food chain while other, animal-like microbes feed on them, and on each other. There are even decomposers and a few synergistic microbes getting along like Disney woodland creatures. 

How big a deal is it to discover a new ecosystem developing in the middle of an old one? (An old one which supports about a billion people, that is.) The answer is that no one knows quite yet. Still, it is pretty likely that this new microbial cocktail (yum!) will alter the ocean ecosystem in some larger way.

One very interesting but very hypothetical possibility proposed by the Woods Hole team is that some of these microbes may actually be cleaning up the plastic for us, since they were found hunkered down in ‘pits’ on the surface of the plastic particles. If these microbes can degrade petroleum-based materials, that could be an explanation for why the level of plastic debris in the ocean has appeared relatively stable for the last 22 years.

Gee, wouldn’t it be great if the alien lifeforms of the plastisphere could just go all-you-can eat on the mess we have made? Unfortunately, the plastic raft of microbes also could also potentially serve as a vector for harmful pathogens, since plastic can travel much farther on ocean currents than other materials. Researchers found one genus of bacteria called Vibrio, a few species of which are associated with fun gastrointestinal diseases like cholera, which normally cannot survive in the open ocean. I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the plastisphere ends up being more like Alien or Wall-E.


Source
The “Plastisphere:” A new marine ecosystem, Smithsonian Ocean Blog
New life discovered growing on plastic waste dubbed the ‘plastisphere’, ABC Environment

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

This article: 

Look who’s eating your plastic now: A whole unprecedented ecosystem

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Smith's, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Look who’s eating your plastic now: A whole unprecedented ecosystem

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 14, 2013

Mother Jones

An AV-8B Harrier assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 266(Reinforced), 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, takes off from the flight deck of the USS Kearsarge, at sea, Nov. 1, 2013. The 26th MEU finished their eight month deployment to the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of responsibility aboard the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group serving as a sea-based, expeditionary crisis response force capable of conducting amphibious operations across the full range of military operations. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Christopher Q. Stone/Released.

Read this article:  

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 14, 2013

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 14, 2013