Good News on the Climate Change Front! Huge Losses Reported by Fossil Fuel-Based Utility

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 21, 2014 · 10:24 AM PDT

2014/03/21 · 10:24

The good news on the climate change front these days is the extraordinary rise of renewable energy sources in the electric utility industry in Germany. Accounting today for more than 25% of electricity production in the country, decentralized solar and wind energy has led to the precipitous decline of fossil fuel-based utility industry during the past few years. Among the casualties in this energy battle are the huge losses reported this week – in the tune of €2.8 billion or $3.87 billion – by Peter Terium, CEO of RWE, one of Germany largest utility companies:

German energy giant RWE has taken a massive loss of €2.8 billion – it’s first loss in 60 years – after admitting it got its strategy wrong, and should have focused more on renewable and distributed energy rather than conventional fossil fuels.
. . . Last night, Peter Terium, who has been CEO for less than two years, conceded that the company had got it wrong. He admitted that the change in electricity markets, which has seen earnings from conventional generation gutted by the impact of solar and wind energy, was “unstoppable”. It was now time to change strategy, and focus on what the electricity market will look like in the future.

This declining trend in the utility industry had been predicted by market analysts for years, since large Germany utility companies have small portfolios in renewables, the market of which had been captured by smaller off-grid companies and energy contractors catering to home and industrial consumers:

. . . Analysts have been pointing this out for years. Indeed, the big three German utilities have accounted for just 7 per cent of the renewable energy installations that now account for more than one quarter of the country’s generation, and which have transformed the market. Most renewable capacity has been installed by home and industrial consumers, and smaller and smarter energy companies.

For more on this breaking news, jump over the curlicue... Read More

CNN Election Results: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 23, 2008 · 7:47 AM PDT

2008/04/23 · 07:47

All through last evening as the election results were being reported, a number of people asked where CNN came up with their PA election results. Now we know - they cooked the numbers to give Hillary Clinton a 10% victory, not only by rounding up the percentages incorrectly but by manipulating the actual raw numbers or (more likely) by simply manufacturing them out of thin air. Here are the CNN numbers:

Clinton: 1,258,245 (54.6%) = 55%
Obama: 1.042,297 (45.3%) = 45%

The actual difference in percentages is 9.3%, therefore it should be rounded to 9% (99% districts reporting). But if the rounding out of percentages is done before the percentages are subtracted, we get a nice rounded number of 10%. But more egregious is how the numbers of votes that each candidate received are being reported - they simply cannot be correct, since they don't exist. It is a classic example of lies, damned lies and statistics.

CNN numbers: http://edition.cnn.com/...

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday March 19, 2008 · 2:52 PM PDT

2008/03/19 · 14:52

I am very frustrated with dailykos members. They know almost nothing about mainline Christian denominations in this country. Not knowing much about an important cultural force in our society is tantamount to someone living in an Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist country and not knowing much about their religious traditions. That is not very likely to happen...

At any rate, to remedy this lack of knowledge of Barack Obama's denomination - the United Church of Christ (UCC) - of which his congregation Trinity UCC is member church in South Chicago, here is a bit of information. It is based on two set of comments I posted a while ago on dailykos but almost no one seems to have noticed.

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday March 13, 2008 · 10:38 PM PDT

2008/03/13 · 22:38

In today's (March 14, 2008) edition of the New York Times, there is a wonderful portrait of Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro. We know almost nothing about her, except that she married Barack's Kenyan father at the age of 18 and later married an Indonesian and moved to Jakarta. There is not much written about her in Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father. From what we know of Obama's character, it is not entirely surprising to learn what an incredibly accomplished and caring person she was in her own right. Now we know a lot more!

Link to NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/...

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday May 05, 2007 · 7:46 AM PDT

2007/05/05 · 07:46

Many grocery stores today are beginning to carry shade grown coffee, but the average customer in the store - including well-informed progressive democrats - have no idea what's so special about them. What they don’t realize is that coffee is traditionally grown in an agro-forestry cultivated environment, where shady trees shelter the coffee plant from direct sunlight. Starting in the 1970s, a number of large commercial plantations introduced new varieties of sunlight tolerant coffee plants. It is now believed that the loss of forested lands to open field coffee plantations in many parts of Latin America has led to a significant decline in migratory songbirds in the Western Hemisphere.

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday April 22, 2007 · 11:31 PM PDT

2007/04/22 · 23:31

Today's Washington Post has an article on John Edwards working for the past few years as a consultant to a hedge fund firm, Fortress Investment Group, with $30 billion in assets. According to the Post article, he's "raised $167,460 in donations from Fortress employees for his 2008 presidential campaign, his largest source of support from a single company."

What ever happened to Edward's description of the "Two Americas" - (the very rich + the merely rich) and (the rest of us). Was it just overblown campaign rhetoric? Was his vision of defending the common person only so much hot air? Someone needs to figure this one out soon...

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 20, 2007 · 1:17 PM PDT

2007/04/20 · 13:17

At present, the organic milk market is a $2 billion industry in the U.S. This is because an increasingly number of parents purchase milk that’s labelled "organic" for their children. They do so in the belief that such dairy products are not only wholesome and nutritious, but are derived from farm animals raised without use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, or housed in feedlots under factory-like conditions. However, the label "organic" is no longer a guarantee that such practices are being adhered to by all producers of milk products.

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 05, 2007 · 8:35 AM PDT

2007/04/05 · 08:35

Back in the early 1970s, at the beginning of the environmental movement, deadly acid rain arising from the operations of the copper-nickel smelting plant in Sudbury, Ontario, became the iconic symbol of everything that had gone wrong with our rapidly developing industrial system during the first half of the 20th century. With the world's tallest stack emitting copious amounts of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, the INCO's Sudbury plant in Canada converted the surrounding area near Lake Huron into a virtual moonscape, where little or no vegetation or animals could survive.

Today, that dubious honor belongs to a little known, highly secretive smelting plant in Norilsk, a remote town on the northern shores of Siberia, where for the past several decades the huge industrial plant has spewed copious amounts of acid-rain forming sulfurous gases into the surrounding region.

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 04, 2007 · 6:43 PM PDT

2007/04/04 · 18:43

How can the American public continue to ignore the horrendously inhumane conditions of inmates in Guantanamo Bay prison camp? How can we believe ourselves to be living in a civilized, free democracy when we tacitly allow such travesty to occur in our name?

A new Amnesty International report on Guantanamo to be released on Thursday, clearly documents the worsening conditions of some 300 inmates at the prison camp, most of whom are placed in windowless, isolated cells for 22 hours a day. According to BBC news reporton the findings:

Conditions for detainees at the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay are deteriorating, with the majority held in solitary confinement, a report says.

Amnesty International said the often harsh and inhumane conditions at the camp were "pushing people to the edge".

Poll

51 votes Show Results

What should we do about Guantanamo Bay prison camp?

51 votes Vote Now!

What should we do about Guantanamo Bay prison camp?

Shut it down permanently in the next three months

11 votes

Shut it down immediately and transfer the prisoners to the US mainland

40 votes

Keep the status quo

0 votes

Allow the Administration to do whatever it wishes with the prisioners

0 votes

The Bush War on Terrorism: The Theology of Empire

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 30, 2007 · 5:01 AM PDT

2007/03/30 · 05:01

Below is an article written by Professor Robert Nadeau, who teaches environmental sciences and public policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The materials in this article are derived from two of his recently published books, The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Failed the Environment (Columbia University Press, 2003) and The Environmental Endgame: Mainstream Economics, Ecological Disaster, and Human Survival (Rutgers University Press, 2006).

"I’ve heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president. I can’t explain it, but I sense that my country is going to need me, I know it won’t be easy, on me or my family. But God wants me to do it." - George W. Bush

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday March 28, 2007 · 3:31 PM PDT

2007/03/28 · 15:31

At the Arab League summit meeting which began today in Riyadh, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a close friend of the Bush family and one of United States' strongest ally in the Middle East, signalled his intention to distance himself from the White House on the Iraq war, while voicing criticism concerning the lack of progress related to current negotiations between US, Israeli and Palestinian representatives. According to a news report by New York Times correspondent covering the summit:

Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq
By Hassan M. Fattah

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 28 — The king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, condemned the presence of American forces in Iraq as an "illegitimate foreign occupation" in a speech today, and said the withholding of aid to Palestinians should end.

The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League summit here, appeared to distance his country’s position from that of the United States. Saudi Arabia has been a powerful Arab ally to the United States in the Persian Gulf region.

Poll

103 votes Show Results

Is the end in sight for the Iraq war?

103 votes Vote Now!

Is the end in sight for the Iraq war?

Yes, in the next 6 months

15 votes

Yes, in the next year

23 votes

No, it will drag on till after the next 2008 election

65 votes

Israeli/US Collusion in Lebanon War: A Neocon Failure?

mobiusein

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday March 24, 2007 · 11:38 PM PDT

2007/03/24 · 23:38

In a recent interview by Amy Goodman with Andrew Cockburn, the author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, there was this interesting exchange regarding George W. Bush asking his father the definition of a neocon:

AMY GOODMAN: In 2006, you write that George W. Bush said to his father, "What's a neocon?"

ANDREW COCKBURN: That's right. One of the rare moments of sort of communication between the two. Bush said to -- they were out at Kennebunkport, and Bush Jr. says, "Can I ask you a question? What's a neocon?" And the father says, "Do you want names or a description?" The President says, "I’ll take a description." He says, "I’ll give it to you in one word: Israel," which is interesting on all sorts of levels, including the confirmation that our president doesn't really read the newspapers.

Newer
Older

RSS

Good News on the Climate Change Front! Huge Losses Reported by Fossil Fuel-Based Utility

CNN Election Results: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

UCC President, Rev John Thomas speaks about attacks against Jeremiah Wright

Meet Barack Obama's mother - Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro

Shade Grown Coffee: What Dems Don't Know About

Edwards as Hedge Fund Consultant - What's Going On?

Organic Milk: Do You Know What Your Kids Are Drinking?

Siberia's Environmental Nightmare: World's Largest Source of Acid Rain

Amnesty's New Guantanamo Report: Conditions 'Worsening'

The Bush War on Terrorism: The Theology of Empire

Beginning of the end: Saudi Government pulling plug on the Bush Administration

Israeli/US Collusion in Lebanon War: A Neocon Failure?