Eideard

Reuters pictures used by permission

Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party faces an array of Communists, nationalists and liberals in a parliamentary election on Sunday, but one of its ardent opponents is a more peculiar political animal: a cartoon pig named Nakh-Nakh.

Pushed to the margins since Putin came to power 12 years ago, some of the prime minister’s fiercest foes are urging Russians to reject the political system he has put in place by spoiling their ballots in Sunday’s State Duma vote.

“This is not an election in the European sense of the word, because no party that presents a challenge, or has not been agreed with the Kremlin, has been allowed to run,” said satirist Viktor Shenderovich, a co-founder of the Nakh-Nakh movement.

“The question is what people who understand this is a farce should do.”

Their answer: Nakh-Nakh, a bespectacled pig with an orange scarf, a blue beret and a double-entendre of a name that to Russians evokes both the Three Little Pigs and an obscenity which, put more politely, means ‘Go away!’…

In a series of animated clips posted on the Internet, the pink-cheeked pig casts his vote, angrily marking the box for each party with an X and adding a big black X across the entire ballot before slipping it through the slot…

The message: It’s the same no matter how you slice it…

Russians used to be able to register disapproval of their choice by marking an “against all” box on the ballot.

Nearly three million voters did so in the 2003 election to the Duma, Russia’s lower parliament house. The “against all” option received 4.7 percent of the votes, more than 19 of the 23 parties on the ballot.

The Duma then passed legislation striking the “against all” option from ballots, part of a series of electoral reforms enacted during Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency that critics said were meant to silence dissent and strengthen his grip on power.

The Kremlin-controlled parliament also raised the threshold needed to win State Duma seats to 7 percent and threw up other barriers to potential challengers.

All of the restrictions added in Russia have been practiced in the United States – most are still in force.

Nakh-Nakh.

Earlier this month, an AeroMexico plane made an important flight from Mexico City to Madrid. The flight wasn’t notable for who was inside the cabin, but for what was inside the fuel tank: it was the world’s first transatlantic commercial flight using biofuel.

The engines on that flight were powered by a fuel mixture that was 30% biofuel from the jatropha plant, and the trip followed a pair of Mexican domestic commercial flights by Interjet that used the same formula.

Mexico is known for its oil production, but it could be its less obvious flats of arid and marginal land that will be the future of Mexico’s energy resources. The country has quietly positioned itself to become a potential leader in biofuel production as scientists develop a second generation of fuels derived from sources that don’t compete for arable land or with food.

Jatropha-based biofuels are being increasingly used in Mexico, and agave — the plant from which tequila is made — is being studied as a new source for ethanol…Some biofuels, such as ethanol derived from corn and sugar, can indirectly raise the prices of staple foods in many places, along with raising ethical issues [mostly among weenies]…

Gilberto Lopez’s agency teamed up with the state of Chiapas, where Gov. Juan Sabines had already made a name for himself pushing his state toward alternative fuels. Chiapas began cultivating jatropha, whose seeds contain oil that can be extracted and converted into biofuel. The state already uses a jatropha biofuel mix on its buses and trucks, and President Felipe Calderon was on hand in November of last year to inaugurate a biodiesel plant there…

Mexico has several things in its favor to become a leader in biofuels, he said. It has plenty of land not being used for food, it has a high demand for energy, and it is located next door to the energy-hungry United States.

As much as anything else, rural land law needs to be modified to allow large-scale agricultural development for success in alternative fuels. That would be needed for food crops, as well. Since it looks like the demand and profit potential for a diminishing rural population lies with jatropha and a surplus of agave – a rational person might think the prospect for a rural economy in biofuel is very good.

Well – maybe. Rural villages in Mexico can work amazingly hard at staying in the 19th Century. Time will tell.

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama proclaimed that there would be one million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015. Toyota recently celebrated the building of the company’s three millionth hybrid worldwide. More and more automakers are turning to the battery pack and electric motors to improve fuel economy or remove petrol from the equation altogether, but do Americans know what any of this means? Not really, at least according to a recent study.

MediaPost reports that marketing firm Synovate recently polled 1,898 would-be car buyers to gauge their knowledge of hybrids and electric cars, and the results are not encouraging. Only two-thirds are aware that hybrids use both petrol and battery power for propulsion, and a large portion didn’t know hybrids even had batteries onboard. And while regular readers might know that some hybrids can run for short distances on electricity alone, only a third of those polled were aware of that little tidbit.

The results of this poll are likely disheartening to advertisers who have tried tirelessly over the years to explain how hybrids work. And with plug-ins and electric cars starting to hit the market, the education of the car-buying public has just begun. Case in point? Less than half of the nearly 2,000 car-buyers polled knew that plug-in hybrids can run on electric power alone. So… just what is that plug for, then?

Ignorance really ain’t bliss, you know.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

More than a quarter of the electricity generated in Scotland last year was produced from wind, hydro and other renewable sources.

Official figures showed the amount of renewable power increased by a fifth, while the total power generated in Scotland went up by 3%.

Scotland exported nearly a quarter of the total power produced…

Roseanna Cunningham, the environment and climate change minister, commented: “As Scotland faces a white Christmas, we are greening up our energy supply.

“Scotland is blessed with abundant natural energy sources, particularly in our seas, and today’s figures follow a steady trend towards Scotland’s energy becoming greener and cleaner”. She said 2010 had also been a “tremendous year” for the renewable power sector, with more wind power developments in the planning and construction pipeline.

She said Scotland was on course to meet its 2011 target of sourcing 31% of its electricity from renewable sources. The Scottish government recently uprated its targets to hit 80% by 2020.

Hand out a little credit where due. Brian Wilson got all this rolling when he was Cabinet Minister for Energy.

Whatever you may think of Brian’s dedication to Blair and Blairite politics, he got the Green direction in UK power production off the ground. Something that Blair probably wouldn’t have pressed for on his own.

Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google.

The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages…

Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the programme.

This will only affect websites that currently charge for content.

RTFA. Lots of woolgathering and foggy crystal ball-gazing. I think all the media sites have missed the point that Google just established:

You can still press the Back Button and return to your original search page – and click on to another media site offering their own take on the same content, no charge!

Exelon Corp, the largest nuclear power operator in the United States, is the latest U.S. power company to say it will leave the Chamber of Commerce over that group’s opposition to the climate bill.

“The Chamber and other groups think climate legislation will be bad for the economy,” an Exelon spokeswoman said. “We think it’s going to be good for the economy.”

Exelon’s top executive John Rowe said in a speech on Monday that the company would not renew its membership in the Chamber, which has pushed for public hearings to challenge the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Nuclear power is virtually emissions free, which means Exelon could face less emissions costs under climate regulation than a utility that generates electricity mostly from coal and natural gas.

Exelon followed California utility PG&E Corp and New Mexico based PNM Resources Inc in leaving the chamber over the dispute…

“Inaction on climate is not an option,” Rowe said in the speech. “If Congress does not act, the (Environmental Protection Agency) will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive, and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution.”

Way too rational an analysis for lobbyists and their Congressional flunkies.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the world’s best example of money-grubbing guided by an outlook that peers ahead a good three to six months into the future. At best.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The US Marines Corps ordered the first ever energy audit in a war zone today to try to reduce the enormous fuel costs of keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent.

US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. That’s a higher burn rate than during an initial invasion, and reflects the logistical challenges of running counter-insurgency and other operations in the extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan.

“We need to understand where the fuel goes,” Conway told a Marines Corps energy summit today. “The largest growing demand on the battlefield today is for electricity and how we create that.”

He added: “We are going to more efficient. We have got to be.”

Conway’s announcement — and the summit itself, which is the first of its kind — were seen yesterday as a dramatic shift in the US military’s approach to energy consumption and climate change.

The Pentagon began to acknowledge America’s reliance on fossil fuels and climate change as a national security concern in 2002. A report from the Pentagon’s military advisory board last May called on military bases to work to lower their carbon footprint. A number of bases inside the US have begun to tap into renewable fuel sources including wind and solar energy.

But the Marine Corps are the first service to try to put those policies into action on the battlefield.

If you read my posts on a regular basis, you know I’m not surprised by the U.S. Marines beating everyone else to an advanced analysis, a new and useful practice.

It goes back to leadership in place back before World War 2 – and a tradition maintained through the postwar Civil Rights Movement – to the latest requirements of education either on the way in or before your butt is allowed back out into the general public.

Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon. It won’t be as powerful, and its design is a little dated. Think of it as a base-model Ford station wagon instead of a tricked-out Cadillac Escalade.

Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top NASA manager is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion.

This cheaper option is not as powerful as NASA’s current design with its fancy new rockets, the people-carrying Ares I and cargo-lifting Ares V. But the cut-rate plan would still get to the moon.

The new model calls for flying lunar vehicles on something very familiar-looking – the old space shuttle system with its gigantic orange fuel tank and twin solid-rocket boosters, minus the shuttle itself. There are two new vehicles this rocket would carry – one generic cargo container, the other an Apollo-like capsule for astronaut travel. Those new vehicles could both go to the moon or the international space station.

What’s most remarkable about this idea is who it came from: NASA’s shuttle program manager John Shannon. He recently presented it to an independent panel charged with reviewing NASA’s costly spaceflight plans. And he was urged to do so by a top NASA administrator.

It shows that top officials in NASA, an agency of engineers who regularly make contingency plans, worry that their preferred moon plan is running into trouble, space experts said…

The Shannon plan – called the Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle – would only be able to carry two astronauts at a time instead of three or four. That might mean less of a moon base, Shannon said.

Whatever the final plan, Shannon said it all comes down to this: “I would like us to be in the lunar business.”

RTFA and wonder which variant gets the support of NASA, which gets past Congress – and which gets past the beancounters after all.

It would be laughable anywhere else. But, so everyone says, the Waxman-Markey bill…is the best we can expect – from America.

The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.

The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work…

Like the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion (15%) of their carbon permits. The rest will be given away. This means that a resource belonging to everyone (the right to pollute) is captured by industrial interests without public compensation. The more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation will be – the polluter gets paid. It also means, if the ETS is anything to go by, that the big polluters will be able to make windfall profits by passing on the price of the permits they haven’t bought to their consumers…

Even so, I would like to see the bill passed, as it at least provides a framework for future improvements. But why do we expect so little from the US? Why do we treat the world’s most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?

Read the rest of this entry »

Hon Lik used to light up first thing in the morning. He smoked between lectures at the university where he studied Oriental medicine, between bites at lunch, in the lab where he researched ginseng health products. He’d usually burn through two packs by dusk and smoke a third over dinner and drinks with colleagues.

One of the strangest gizmos to come out of China in recent years, Hon’s invention, the electronic cigarette, turns the adage “where there’s smoke there’s fire” on its head.

It doesn’t burn at all. Instead, it uses a small lithium battery that atomizes a liquid solution of nicotine. What you inhale looks like smoke, but it’s a vapor similar to stage fog. (Take that, smoke-free bars!) It even has a red light at the tip that lights up with each drag.

“It’s a much cleaner, safer way to inhale nicotine,” said Hon, blowing curlicues of e-smoke as he showed off the cigarette in his Beijing office. (He says he doesn’t smoke anymore, except for such demonstrations.)

Hon got his first patent on the e-cigarette in 2003 and introduced it to the Chinese market the next year….

This year, it’s planning a big push in the United States. A disposable e-cigarette called the Jazz ($24.95 for the equivalent of five packs) is due to hit 7-Elevens in the Dallas-Fort Worth area shortly. Many rival versions, all made in China, are making their way to the U.S., sold mostly over the Internet by small marketing firms….

Buyer beware.

On the other hand, I am somewhat bemused by countries barring these products until they are demonstrated to be safe… like traditional cigarettes, one supposes.