Life goes on...

Undelivered letters shed light on 17th-century society: Thousands of pieces of correspondence, many still unopened, were stored away by Dutch postmaster and are now being examined by academics

Dispersants didn't disperse the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  The chemicals just hid the mess from people and poisoned all the sea creatures.....

Global climate change is a hoax... or the hoax is a hoax.

What teachers do.

Edible water containers?

Richard Scarry's books for children are keeping up with the times!

Energy for free?!  Oh the humanity!!... I mean, O the corporations!!

From tests to fires and all things in between

John Oliver takes on standardized testing.

A renowned antiquities scholar, Khaled al-Asaad, has been beheaded because he wouldn't tell ISIS where antique artifacts were hidden.  We own this brave man much for saving human history from these ugly vandals.

People killed by US police this year alone.

Buy ugly vegetables and save the world.

The plunder of black life.

Pharmaceuticals in the environment:

All indications are that we're just at the beginning when it comes to understanding the presence and importance of pharmaceuticals in the environment, let alone what to do about them. Even as scientists investigate what's actually out there, pharmaceutical companies work to make drugs and drug production more environmentally benign, wastewater treatment professionals develop better ways to remove pharmaceuticals, and environmental and public health advocates work on campaigns to change practices, studies finding pharmaceuticals in the environment keep coming. 

In fact, Kolpin says, hundreds are published each year. And although the amounts of pharmaceuticals being measured are exceptionally small, he says this information is important because it provides a base line for future comparison. 

"What we think today is safe, we may find 10 years from now there is some effect, that we didn't realize at the time was important," he says. "We're not trying to say the sky is falling. We're trying to put out the science saying there are some things that are of concern."

How much climate change will cost us.

World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables

Dog that helps sniff out foul brood disease in bee colonies.

California is on fire.  So is Alaska...

Oh Texas... you big dope

Texas Senate Votes to Abolish Renewable Energy Programs

Wednesday weirdness, women and wimps

Poor Florida. Giant African Snails are invading. We need to find out if they're edible...

A hedge fund CEO who supports privatization of public schools wants to "help" with the teachers' pension funds...

Overuse of fertilizer is killing us... on the other hand, it allows us to feed our ever burgeoning population.

Anyone remember bash.org?  Best hits.

Women should know their bodies belong to them.

Ramping Up Renewables: Energy You Can Count On

Gabby Giffords speaks out about the senators who "filibustered the bipartisan gun background-check proposal".

But... how would the corporations make money?

The truth about renewable energy: Inexpensive, reliable, and inexhaustible

Renewable energy actually reduces electricity prices for businesses and consumers. 

Infrastructure to connect renewable energy is a great investment. 

Integrating variable renewable resources is easier and cheaper than we thought.

Why has integrating so much wind so fast been relatively painless? 

Geographic diversity: The wind blows at different times in different places across MISO’s 12-state footprint, smoothing out the variation at any single location. 

Better forecasting tools make it easier to accurately predict wind-turbine output. 

Transmission expansions and upgrades are being approved and constructed, giving operators greater flexibility to manage all resources and consumers more choices and competition. 

Grid operators around the country and the globe are gaining experience and learning from each other as they successfully integrate ever larger amounts of renewable energy into their systems.

America has far more than enough renewable energy resources to meet its entire electric demand.

Calling out liars

Before their lies can be repeated enough to become the truth.

Ken Salazar wears a white hat!

And takes head on Big Oil:

When president-elect Barack Obama nominated Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to head the Department of Interior at the end of 2008, some voices in the conservation community wondered whether the moderate Democrat with ties to ranching and other traditional western industries was the best choice to chart a new direction in managing one-fifth of the nation’s land. But immediately after taking office, Salazar quickly moved to dispel many of those worries with a series of directives that forcefully demonstrated that the Bush era had ended, particularly on policies related to energy development on federal lands:

— He suspended 77 controversial oil and gas leases in Utah, some of them near national parks and national monuments.

– Understanding that renewable energy projects create more jobs than fossil fuels development, he directed his agencies to make the development of renewable energy a priority.

– He withdrew the Bush administration’s industry-friendly research and development leases for oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

– He launched a department-wide effort to ensure that federal land management decisions respond effectively to climate change.

And, saying “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he began to clean up the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service, the Interior agency that oversees royalty collections from oil and gas companies operating on federal land and offshore.

How about putting one at the Golden Gate Bridge?

An underwater turbine that generates electricity from tidal streams was plugged into the UK's national grid today. It marks the first time a commercial-scale underwater turbine has fed power into the network and the start of a new source of renewable energy for the UK.

Tidal streams are seen by many as a plentiful and predictable supply of clean energy. The most conservative estimates suggest there is at least five gigawatts of power in tidal flows around the country, but there could be as much as 15GW.

The trial at Strangford Lough, in Northern Ireland, uses a device called SeaGen and generates power at 150kW. However, engineers have plans to increase power to 300kW by the end of the summer. When it is eventually running at full power SeaGen will have an output of 1,200 kW, enough for about 1,000 homes.

Actually... the most efficient thing would to be to build a wind turbine on the Capitol Hill...