Tag Archives: spain

This communal fridge is pretty damn amazing

by WilliamCabrera Posted on August 13, 2015

This communal fridge is pretty damn amazing

By on 13 Aug 2015commentsShare

Anyone who’s ever lived with roommates knows that communal fridges are basically just big boxes of chilled nightmares and disease sprinkled with 500 mostly empty condiment bottles. The idea of a communal fridge for 30,000 people should make even Sigourney Weaver shudder — but the people of the Spanish town of Galdakao are making it work. The goal, NPR reports, is to divert perfectly good food from the dumpster:

In April, the town established Spain’s first communal refrigerator. It sits on a city sidewalk, with a tidy little fence around it, so that no one mistakes it for an abandoned appliance. Anyone can deposit food inside or help themselves.

This crusade against throwing away leftovers is the brainchild of Alvaro Saiz, who used to run a food bank for the poor in Galdakao.

“The idea for a Solidarity Fridge started with the economic crisis — these images of people searching dumpsters for food — the indignity of it. That’s what got me thinking about how much food we waste,” Saiz told NPR over Skype from Mongolia, where he’s moved onto his next project, living in a yurt and building a hospital for handicapped children.

The town allocated about $5,580 for the fridge, which covers the purchase of the nightmare-box itself, electricity, and upkeep as well as a health safety study, NPR reports. And fortunately, the Solidarity Fridge isn’t a complete free-for-all, unlike that moldy food coffin mini-fridge you kept in your college dorm room:

There are rules: no raw meat, fish or eggs. Homemade food must be labeled with a date and thrown out after four days. But Javier Goikoetxea, one of the volunteers who cleans out the fridge, says nothing lasts that long.

“Restaurants drop off their leftover tapas at night — and they’re gone by next morning,” he says. “We even have grannies who cook especially for this fridge. And after weekend barbecues, you’ll find it stocked with ribs and sausage.”

If we had a Solidarity Fridge in my Seattle neighborhood, I, for one, would be willing to overcome the trauma of past fridge cleanings and passive aggressive roommates in order to help with the upkeep. Anything for grannie food and Thai leftovers.

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To Cut Food Waste, Spain’s Solidarity Fridge Supplies Endless Leftovers

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This communal fridge is pretty damn amazing

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"The Troll Slayer": Don’t Miss This Fascinating Profile of Mary Beard

by MildredRandell Posted on August 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here is a partial list of things for which the British historian Mary Beard has gained reverence and notoriety:

Positing that Pompeiians had bad breath, based on tartar levels on their fossilized teeth.
Theorizing that Romans didn’t smile, since Latin lacks words for anything resembling one.
Being the world’s foremost scholar on how Romans pooped.
Going on television without wearing makeup or dying her gray hair.
Retweeting a message she got from a 20-year-old calling her a “filthy old slut.”
On 9/11: suggesting that on some level, the United States “had it coming.”
Disclosing that she was raped when she was 20 in an essay on rape in ancient Rome.

You can read all about it in Rebecca Mead’s excellent new New Yorker profile on the endlessly fascinating Cambridge don. It opens on a lecture that Beard gave earlier this year at the British Museum, titled “Oh Do Shut Up, Dear!,” on the long literary history of men keeping women quiet, from the Odyssey‘s Penelope ordered upstairs to her weaving by her son—”Speech will be the business of men,” he says—to the death threats, rape threats, and general nastiness that Beard and other outspoken women get online. (“I’m going to cut off your head and rape it,” read one of her tweet mentions.) For her part, Beard does not subscribe to the “don’t feed the trolls” school of thought when it comes to dealing with online assailants. She engages, both publicly and privately, often with surprising results:

She has discovered that, quite often, she receives not only an apology from them but also a poignant explanation…After a “Question Time” viewer wrote to her that she was “evil,” further correspondence revealed that he was mostly upset because he wanted to move to Spain and didn’t understand the bureaucracy. “It took two minutes on Google to discover the reciprocal health-care agreement, so I sent it to him,” she says. “Now when I have a bit of Internet trouble, I get an e-mail from him saying, ‘Mary, are you all right? I was worried about you.'”

Fun stuff. And when you’re done with Mead’s piece, check out Beard’s latest book, Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up.

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"The Troll Slayer": Don’t Miss This Fascinating Profile of Mary Beard

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New Zealand Rejects Mining Project on Pacific Seafloor

by Myrna Posted on June 18, 2014

Trans-Tasman Resources had sought final approval to excavate iron ore deposits but was turned down by New Zealand’s environmental agency. Read this article –  New Zealand Rejects Mining Project on Pacific Seafloor ; ;Related ArticlesRecreating Wilderness in SpainDespite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil PipelineArizona Cities Could Face Cutbacks in Water From Colorado River, Officials Say ;

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New Zealand Rejects Mining Project on Pacific Seafloor

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Here’s Why the World Is Spending Less on Renewable Energy

by Gina72Ebzwtxbe Posted on April 8, 2014

Mother Jones

The United Nations climate folks think global investment in renewable energy needs to hit $1 trillion a year by 2030 to keep global warming to an acceptable level. So it might seem disconcerting that in 2013, investment dropped for the second year in a row, down 14 percent from 2012 to $214 billion, according to new data released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance at its annual confab in New York this week.

As investment fell, so too did the total amount of renewable energy being installed worldwide. That’s down nearly 7 percent from 2012 to 2013.

But don’t worry—at least not too much. Even though fewer renewable power systems (excluding large hydroelectric projects, which BNEF doesn’t count in this analysis) were installed last year, we were using more of it: Renewables accounted for 8.5 percent of all the power generated worldwide in 2013, up from 7.8 percent in 2012. BNEF estimated that renewables saved 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equal to keeping 252.6 million cars off the road.

There are two forces at work behind the dropping investment figures, one a good news story and the other not so much. The good news is that 80 percent of the investment decline came thanks to the falling cost of renewable energy technology, primarily solar panels, according to BNEF Advisory Board Chairman Michael Liebreich. The cost of a rooftop solar system in California, for example, which is a good barometer of national trends, has fallen by a third just since 2010. The remaining 20 percent was due to a drop in actual construction activity, thanks to the uncertain fate of government subsidies and general economic sluggishness, especially in Europe.

Still, Liebreich told the clean energy CEOs and investors gathered here this morning that Bloomberg’s proprietary data about future investments suggest annual clean tech installations worldwide are likely to jump 37 percent to 112 gigawatts—a record level—by 2015. Even last year, renewables accounted for more than 40 percent of all the new power installations (including coal plants, nuke plants, etc.) built in 2013. In other words, any time a new power system gets built, it’s increasingly likely to be renewable and not something dirtier.

“This is about a future that’s structured differently than the past,” Liebreich said.

The global trends weren’t spread evenly across countries. Even though China’s overall investment dropped, it still managed to surpass, for the first time ever, the sum spent by all of Europe, where a stagnant economy led countries like Spain and Bulgaria to cut spending on clean energy subsidies. China is the world’s top renewables investor, spending $56 billion on it in 2013 (the US is at $35.8 billion).

In the US, the dip in investment hid a couple other important milestones: Last month California, the nation’s biggest solar market, broke its all-time solar power production record twice on two consecutive days. And in January, the US got an all-time record 4.8 percent of its power from wind turbines, according to BNEF.

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Here’s Why the World Is Spending Less on Renewable Energy

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Like Meat and Beer? Hate Cancer?

by silvermega-1959 Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Spring is coming. Before long, beer-drinking men and women will be coaxing fiery embers to life and tossing dead animals onto charred metal grates above them. Ahh, the sizzle and snap of fat as it hits red hot coals. Oh no! What’s that you say? Carcinogens are caused by the “contact of dripping fat with hot embers“?

Fear not, eager human. And keep a couple of your dark winter beers handy, because researchers from Portugal and Spain have found that marinating your pork chops in dark beer dramatically reduces carcinogenic contamination. Rejoice!

Smoke, pyrolysis (organic matter decomposing in intense heat), and dripping fat can all cause the accumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on charcoal-grilled meats. According to the EPA, PAHs have caused tumors, birth defects, and “reproductive problems” in lab animals—though the Agency clarifies that these effects have not yet been observed in humans. You can also find PAHs in cigarette smoke and car exhaust.

The researchers tested the effect of marinating meat with Pilsner, nonalcohol Pilsner, and Black beer, against a control sampling of raw meat. Black beer show the strongest “inhibitory effect,” reducing the formation of carcinogenic PAHs by 53 percent. Pilsner beer and nonalcholic Pilsner, showed less significant results: 13 percent and 25 percent respectively. The scientists aren’t entirely sure why a beer marinade has this effect; they speculate that it might be the antioxidant compounds in beer, especially darker varieties, which inhibit the movement of free radicals necessary for the formation of PAHs.

The study, which will be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, and sponsored by the University of Porto and the American Chemical Society, confirms what we always knew in our hearts: Guinness is good for you.

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Like Meat and Beer? Hate Cancer?

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Spain’s Solar Pullback Threatens Pocketbooks

by AurelioSowell Posted on January 5, 2014

green4us

A Small Furry Prayer – Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler was forty years old, single, and facing an existential crisis when he met Lila, a woman devoted to animal rescue. “Love me, love my dogs” was her rule, and Steven took it to heart. Spurred to move by a housing crisis in Los Angeles, Steven, Lila, and their eight dogs-then ten, then twenty, and then they lost count-bought a postage-sta […]

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Penny Saving Household Helper – Rebecca DiLiberto

This handy guide resurrects the fine art of frugal housekeeping with over 500 tips on saving money throughout the home and garden. Learn creative ways to cut back, pinch pennies, reduce, recycle, and re-use. Want to save on the grocery bill? Buy the whole chicken rather than individual cuts. Get more wear out of your wardrobe? Add a dash of salt to the washe […]

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Decoding Your Dog – American College of Veterinary Behaviorists

More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups. The key to training dog […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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What the Dog Did – Emily Yoffe

Dave Barry meets The Secret Lives of Dogs in Emily Yoffe’s funny and insightful look at all things canine. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record.

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Codex: Tyranids (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

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Warhammer 40,000 Altar of War: Tyranids – Games Workshop

The Tyranids are a deadly race of intergalactic monstrosities, bent upon devouring the galaxy’s many worlds and leaving nothing but airless wastelands in their wake. To fight the Tyranid swarm is an experience utterly unlike any other battle a general may face, for these terrifying aliens seek not to conquer or to raid, but to consume all life in their path. […]

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Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Not all battles in the 41st Millennium are massed engagements between lumbering armies and towering war machines. In the shadows of these epic conflicts, squads of elite soldiers clash – their missions no less vital, their foes no less deadly. Designated as Kill Teams by the Imperium, or by a myriad of different names for their alien and daemonic counterpart […]

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Codex: Tyranids (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

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Spain’s Solar Pullback Threatens Pocketbooks

Posted in alo, ATTRA, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Holmes, LAI, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, Vintage, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Spain’s Solar Pullback Threatens Pocketbooks

Want to Piss Off the White House? Talk About Climate Change

by marsxxzaa Posted on November 14, 2013

Mother Jones

Politico’s Glenn Thrush has a revealing new piece on the pressures of being in President Obama’s cabinet—a supposedly fun thing most of its members will never do again. There a lot of nuggets in there, but one in particular stood out: the White House’s private outrage at former Secretary of Energy Steve Chu’s impromptu decision to talk about climate change while visiting an island nation uniquely threatened by it. On a trip to Trinidad and Tobago with the president, a staffer persuaded press secretary Robert Gibbs to let Chu answer a few questions:

Gibbs reluctantly assented. Then Chu took the podium to tell the tiny island nation that it might soon, sorry to say, be underwater—which not only insulted the good people of Trinidad and Tobago but also raised the climate issue at a time when the White House wanted the economy, and the economy only, on the front burner. “I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans, and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes,” Chu said. “This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. … The island states … some of them will disappear.”

Earnest slunk backstage. “OK, we’ll never do that again,” he said as Gibbs glared. A phone rang. It was White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel calling Messina to snarl, “If you don’t kill Chu, I’m going to.”

Emanuel didn’t kill Chu, although that would have made for a more interesting story.

A couple things stand out here. Trinidad and Tobago is seriously threatened by climate change, and given the efforts of similarly situated island nations—the Maldives; Tuvalu—to call attention to the crisis, it’s hardly an insult to use the occasion of a trip to the country to talk about it. (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago’s capital, is 10 feet above sea level.) But this underscores just how narrow the White House’s thinking was at that time. Does anyone actually remember Steven Chu speaking out about sea-level rises in Trinidad and Tobago? Did it really distract from the president’s economic message? Were there mass protests in the streets of Port of Spain? Did it delay pending legislation or result in any electoral setbacks? The reality is that talking about climate change probably isn’t going to be a catastrophe, no matter how awkward it might seem at the time—but not talking about climate change most definitely will.

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Want to Piss Off the White House? Talk About Climate Change

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U.S. nuclear companies fight new safety measures

by MalenMajure469 Posted on March 4, 2013

U.S. nuclear companies fight new safety measures

By John Upton

Constellation Energy Group

Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in New York could use a couple radiation filters.

How much should a nuclear power plant operator spend to prevent radiation from spewing into the air during an accident, à la Fukushima and Chernobyl?

The answer, according to staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is $20 million per reactor. That’s the price tag for a filter that could be fitted to a reactor’s vent to capture radiation during an accident.

Many reasonable people might think that $20 million is a reasonable price to pay to prevent the potential contamination of the air and land with deadly radiation. Germans apparently think so: Such filters are installed at all nine of that country’s nuclear reactors. Japan gets it: After the Fukushima meltdown, the nation is requiring radiation filters to be installed on all reactors. All quite reasonable.

But the executives running America’s nuclear power plants don’t seem to be so reasonable. As NRC commissioners prepare to vote as soon as this week to adopt or reject their staff’s recommendation that they mandate the use of such filters in some of the nation’s oldest reactors, industry is lobbying in opposition. The problem? Companies don’t want to spend the money. From Bloomberg:

A proposed requirement that U.S. nuclear-power plants add $20 million devices to prevent radiation leaks, one of the costliest recommendations stemming from meltdowns in Japan two years ago, has attracted a flurry of last-minute lobbying.

The U.S. nuclear industry opposes the rule, which would require almost a third of the nation’s reactors to install a special filter on vents designed to prevent an explosive buildup of gases. Exelon Corp., which owns more U.S. reactors than any other company, estimates each filter would cost $20 million, meaning the Chicago-based company could end up paying $220 million to equip its units. …

The industry prefers a plant-by-plant approach to the question of whether filters are necessary.

Needless to say, not everybody thinks that power plant operators should be allowed to save money at the potential expense of human health and lives. From the same article:

Supporters of the measure say it is overdue and consistent with what the rest of the world is doing. Japan announced last year that filtered vents will be required on its reactors. Other nations that use or are considering filtered venting systems on their reactors include Taiwan, Spain, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, France and the Netherlands, according to the NRC.

“The tens of millions of Americans who live near the affected reactors located in 15 states should not face additional delays,” a dozen Democratic senators led by Barbara Boxer of California and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a Feb. 20 letter [PDF] to NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane.

So stay tuned to find out whether the NRC, under the new leadership of Macfarlane, will prioritize energy-company penny pinching or protection of humanity.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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U.S. nuclear companies fight new safety measures

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Somehow, the renewable sector in Sicily was infiltrated by the Mob

by wqds234der Posted on January 23, 2013

Somehow, the renewable sector in Sicily was infiltrated by the Mob

By Philip Bump

If you look at it in one way, this is pretty good news. After all, if renewable energy weren’t a growing market with potential for profit, why would the Mob have any interest in it? From the Washington Post:

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

Because it receives more sun and wind than any other part of Italy, Sicily became one of Europe’s most obvious hotbeds for renewable energies over the past decade. As the Italian government began offering billions of euros annually in subsidies for wind and solar development, the potential profitability of such projects also soared — a fact that did not go unnoticed by Sicily’s infamous crime families.

Wikipedia

Would you buy a solar installation from this man?

Unsuprisingly, the discovery of deep Mafia infiltration in a heavily-subsidized industry prompted the government to step in.

Roughly a third of the island’s 30 wind farms — along with several solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime bosses; corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs. Italian prosecutors are now investigating suspected mafia involvement in renewable energy projects from Sardinia to Apulia.

My initial optimism aside, this is clearly bad news for the sector in Italy. In 2011, Italy led the world in new solar capacity and was fourth in overall renewable investment, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century [PDF]. 2013 will almost certainly be less successful.

REN21

Click to embiggen.

It does, however, provide inspiration for the script I’ve been developing, working title: Godfather IV. The only line I have so far is, “Leave the solar panel; take the cannoli.” But I think it shows promise.

Source

Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy, Washington Post

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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