Solar Power Glut

energy forever, clouds reflected in solar panels, originally uploaded by mikeporcenaluk.

Next year production of solar panels my exceed demand.

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - The solar power sector will produce an over supply of solar panels in 2009, said Zhengrong Shi, chief executive of the world's biggest module manufacturer Suntech.

"We expect definitely an over supply of modules next year," he told Reuters in an interview, adding Suntech expected its euro-denominated prices to fall by 10-15 percent next year, by 25-30 percent in dollars, compared to the third quarter of 2008.

"The financial crisis has accelerated that situation," Shi said. The entire sector could halve the cost of solar power before 2012, he added, assuming companies cooperated on cutting prices across the supply chain.

The price of solar coming down is great news. The cheaper the panels, the faster the payback.

Cops Bust Christmas Tree Grow In War On Christmas

OK, there is not really a war on Christmas but with losers like Bill O'reilly screaming about it I can not resist the headline.

Police in Odessa Texas, need to find something else to do. The busted a house with two small Christmas trees under grow lights.

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

Now how do you get a search warrant if there is nothing illegal going on? It is illegal to use the FLIR imaging. No one saw marijuana being grown or smelled it as it was not there. Do you really want your tax dollars spent on this? Oh, and the local prosecutor is trying to find some law the group kopbusters broke. What an ass.
A local TV stations coverage.

Video of raid here.
Via Talk Left.

Salmon Tracking

Scientists are now putting small transmitters in salmon and other fish.

Their remarkable three-month, 1,500-mile journey of survival to the Gulf of Alaska was tracked by an underwater acoustic listening network that has wired the West Coast from just north of San Francisco to southeastern Alaska . The tracking network could provide a model for a global system.

A salmon's life in the ocean has always been one of nature's best kept mysteries.

However, scientists using the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking network have made some startling discoveries that challenge long-held beliefs about salmon survival and raise new cautions about how global warming may affect salmon and other marine species.[...]

Juvenile coho salmon, about five inches in length, can travel almost 20 miles a day in the ocean and nearly 40 miles in rivers, or about 200,000 body lengths a day, she said. An average-sized person swimming at the same rate would cover nearly 220 miles a day in the ocean and almost 435 miles in a river, Chittenden said.

Using the tracking system, Chittenden said, researchers also found that wild juvenile salmon take less time to enter the ocean than hatchery fish, perhaps because the hatchery fish tend to be heavier and slower. And wild fish adapt faster to saltwater than hatchery ones.

Maybe we can save the salmon from ourselves.

End Prohibition

Friday marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the prohibition of alcohol. And with it the violence created by the gangs that sold the drug alcohol. A group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is calling for legalization of illegal drugs.

Wouldn't legalizing drugs create new users? Not necessarily. LEAP wants drugs to be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes. Regulations are why it's harder to buy alcohol or cigarettes in many schoolyards than drugs. By regulating the purity and strength of drugs, they become less deadly.

Isn't drug addiction a scourge that tears families apart? Yes, it is, and so are arrests and incarceration and criminal records for kids caught smoking pot behind the bleachers. There are 2.1 million people in federal, state and local prisons, 1.7 million of them for non-violent drug offenses.

Removing the stigma of drug use lets addicts come out into the open for treatment. We have treatments for alcoholism, but we don't ban alcohol.

In addition to ending much of the violence it will create new jobs and tax revenue for the municipalities that decide to legalize.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that legalizing drugs would save federal, state and local governments $44 billion in enforcement costs. Governments could collect another $33 billion in revenues were they to tax drugs as heavily as alcohol and tobacco.

It is the only real way to deal with a policy that has not worked for the last 80 plus years.

Link via Avedon.

The Great Wall

Great Wall, originally uploaded by Carpe Feline.

I have always wanted to walk the length of the great wall of China. But after reading this article I am not sure it is possible.

Without academic affiliation or funding, Spindler has spent 14 years traveling across China and to Japan to review arcane centuries-old texts for firsthand accounts and details. And he has spent more than 830 days clambering over the wall's far-flung ramparts around Beijing, enough to wear through several pairs of hiking boots.[...]

"I've spent 5 percent of my life there," he says of the wall.

It is not what I thought.

He has learned, for example, that the Great Wall is not one continuous structure but a series of fortifications, built with various materials, including packed earth, bricks and mortar, field stones and quarried rock. In some places, it isn't a wall at all, but a string of unconnected signal towers. No one has determined exactly how long it runs, but estimates vary from thousands to tens of thousands of miles.

It will be hard to walk along the wall if it is not there!

No Clean Coal

This a tour of the clean coal technology in action. There are no prototypes working. There is no actual technology. There is an idea that co2 emissions can be captured and stored. This is called carbon capture and storage. No one is currently doing this. The coal industry does have a large advertising campaign touting clean coal. If it is repeated often enough people will believe!

Schools Or Prisons?

The politicians chose for you. They chose prisons. Juan Cole has an excellent post on the subject.

A big drain on state budgets is the penitentiary system. In just the decade 1980 to 1990, the prison and jail population in the US doubled. Since 1980, the prison population has quadrupled. By the end of 2006, over 2 million persons were in prison and another 5 million were on probation or on parole.

I remember reading in the Ann Arbor News in 1988 about a big debate at the statehouse in Lansing over funding for prisons versus funding for universities. The prisons won.

In these same nearly four decades, there have been substantial declines in violent crimes and crimes against property in the US. The vastly increased prison population was produced by unreasonably long prison sentences for non-violent crime, by ridiculous 3-strikes-and-you-are-out life sentences and by the completely failed 'war on drugs' and by mandatory sentencing guidelines imposed by legislatures on judges in drug cases. Half of prisoners in state prisons did not commit a violent crime, and 20% are drug offenders.[...]
The states had to put their money into prosecuting, trying, imprisoning and then supporting to the tune of like $20,000 a year a bunch of . . . potheads.

The whole thing is worth a read. Some key points, alcohol causes more problems than marijuana yet nobody is talking about alcohol prohibition. Marijuana should be taxed and regulated. Some of the tax money for treatment programs for people that can not handle marijuana. I think the alcohol industry should have a similar tax for people that can not handle alcohol.

Good!

Maybe not enough people were indicted.

SPRINGFIELD - Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury was indicted on an involuntary manslaughter charge on Thursday in the death of an 8-year-old Connecticut boy who shot himself accidentally at a Westfield gun show in October.

Also indicted on involuntary manslaughter charges were the Westfield Sportsman's Club, where the death occurred, and two other individuals, identified in court records as Carl Giuffre, of Hartford, and Domenico Spano, of New Milford, Conn.

Fleury and the sportsmen's club were each also indicted by a Hampden Superior Court grand jury on four counts of furnishing a machine gun to a person under 18.

Do not give machine guns to small children. This why we need gun laws. Yes, the majority of gun owners handle their guns responsibly but they are deadly weapons.

Good Idea

Susie says

Members of Congress should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we can identify their corporate sponsors.

Oops!

Congressman hangs on president-elect Obama.

On Wednesday, the Republican congresswoman got a call from President-elect Barack Obama, didn't believe it was him, and hung up on him. Twice.

According to Ros-Lehtinen's flack Alex Cruz, the congresswoman received the call on her cell phone from a Chicago-based number and an aide informed her that Obama wanted to speak to her. When Obama introduced himself, Ros-Lehtinen cut him off and said, "I'm sorry but I think this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks." Then she hung up.

Moments later, Obama tried again, this time through his soon-to-be chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

"Ileana, I cannot believe you hung up on the President-Elect," Emanuel said. And then--yes, you know what's coming--she hung up on Emanuel saying she "didn't believe the call was legitimate."

Sad To Hear

Jeffry Frye ,who fell in the Smokies in November, died of his injuries.

Jeremy Frye, 25, of Knoxville fell approximately 25-30 feet from the top of Grotto Falls on Nov. 8, a popular hiking destination along Trillium Gap Trail a few miles south of Gatlinburg, Tenn.

He suffered apparent leg, back and head injuries in the mishap. Park rangers responded to the scene and transported the victim by wheeled litter about 1.5 miles to the Trillium Gap Trailhead. He was then transferred to Gatlinburg Ambulance and subsequently was flown by LIFESTAR to The University of Tennessee Hospital in Knoxville.

My condolences to his friends and family.

Michigan Legalizes Medical Marijuana

It should help the economy.

For the first time ever, the state Department of Community Health is working out a process to permit some seriously ill people and their caregivers to possess and grow marijuana. The move is required by the medical marijuana initiative that Michigan voters approved last month.

The law, which won a majority of voters in every county of the state, takes effect on Thursday. The state has until April 4 to establish the rules for the program. The Department of Community Health will issue draft rules this month, and a public hearing is expected in January.

Both the Department of Community Health and the newly formed nonprofit Michigan Medical Marijuana Association are planning education drives to help smooth the transition into state licensing of medicinal marijuana users.

In California medical marijuana is estimated to be a 100 million to 2 billion dollar industry. That number is for the legal marijuana that gets taxed. Imagine if California got just sales tax on the estimated 22 billion dollar illegal sales.

Island Nations Worried

About global warming.

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - A group of 43 small island states called on Wednesday for tougher goals for fighting global warming than those being considered at U.N. climate talks, saying that rising seas could wipe them off the map.

"We are not prepared to sign a suicide agreement that causes small island states to disappear," Selwin Hart of Barbados, a coordinator of the alliance of small island states, told Reuters at the 187-nation meeting.

It seems if you live at sea level you take the threat of global warming more seriously than a republican. Why?

It's still likely that the average sea level will rise less than 1 meter by 2100 but higher figure cannot be excluded," said Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

He said that some studies indicated that seas could rise by up to about 1.55 meters by 2100 and 1.5-3.5 meters by 2300.

"If the Antarctic ice sheet melts down completely the global sea levels would rise by 57 meters (187 ft). For Greenland it's 7 meters," he said.

Just remember everything seems to be happening faster than the scientists are predicting.

Trevor Thomas

The blind hiker known as Zero/Zero finished the Appalachian Trail on October 7, with broken ribs after a fall on Maine's Saddleback Mountain. A truly amazing feat. The Charlotte Observer has the best of many articles I have seen about Zero/Zero.

On the day he was to start, his acquaintance that was going to hike with him did not show. Undeterred he asked passing hikers if he could walk behind them. The 24th said yes. You should really read it all. But My love of the Appalachian Trail is not so much about the trail but the people. Here is a quote from Z/Z

“I put my life in the hands of complete strangers over and over again,” Thomas said. “And whenever it seemed the darkest, whenever it seemed the magic had run out, someone would be there.”

Things like that make me feel good about the American people. One on one with out politics or religion we do the right thing and help our fellow man.

Funny!

TPM's Eric Kleefeld on Sarah Palin's groupies in GA. Some of whom came as far away as New Mexico to see her.

It's like the Grateful Dead, only more spaced out.

Venus, Jupiter, and Crescent Moon

Venus-Jupiter-Cresent Moon, originally uploaded by san_duch.

A rare occurrence.

Atheists Are Happier

And nicer and a whole lot lees mean.

It is at this point that the "We need God to be good" case falls apart. Countries worthy of consideration aren't those like North Korea and China, where religion is savagely repressed, but those in which people freely choose atheism. In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.

Denmark and Sweden aren't exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.

I think a lot of crime has to do with poverty. Get rid of poverty and a lot of social problems go away.

Ale

Fuel Vapor Three-Wheeler, originally uploaded by John Hay.

The Ale by Fuel Vapor Technology gets 97 mpg. I wonder how soon we are going to see the three wheel vehicles on the streets. The Aptera is also a three wheel vehicle. It is much closer to production than the Ale. It also has Google money behind it.

Some people are trying to get fuel efficient cars to market. Even if the big three do not believe.

Faster and Faster

Joseph Romm has a post up about the Himalayan Glaciers melting. If they disappeared it would affect the lives of billions of people in Asia. At the end of his post he puts up a list of things that are happening faster than scientists thought.

• "The recent [Arctic] sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the (19) IPCC [climate] models" [PDF] -- and that was a Norwegian expert in 2005. The retreat has accelerated in the past two years.
• The ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule." That was Penn State climatologist Richard Alley in March 2006. In 2001, the IPCC thought that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.
• Sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 -- 3.3 millimetres per year as measured by satellites -- was higher than the IPCC climate models predicted.
• The ocean carbon sink is saturating sooner than expected.
  
• The subtropics are expanding faster than the models project.

It is going to be an interesting couple of decades.

Gone!

The acorns are gone.

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather, Simmons thought. But he hoped it wasn't a climatic event. "Let's hope it's not something ghastly going on with the natural world."

There are no acorns in Baltimore County, MD. Strange days.