Japan's New Green Car Push
Detroit will have to work hard to catch Japanese automakers in the race to produce hybrids, electric cars, cleaner diesels, and fuel-cell vehicles


In 2009, Mitsubishi will begin marketing its i-MiEV electric vehicle in Japan.



Any lingering concerns over the cost and reliability of lithium-ion batteries, a technology not yet used in any mass-production hybrid car but which will help power the Volt, are outweighed by the excitement that GM will finally have a vehicle capable of rivaling Toyota's (TM) Prius hybrid as the green car champion.

Yet when the Volt arrives in November 2010, assuming GM meets its challenging deadline, can the U.S. automaker make up for lost time in the race with Japan's automakers to produce cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars? Even if the Volt is as impressive as GM hopes, a slew of recent announcements by Japan's automakers suggest closing the gap will be tough.

A Lot More Hybrids to Come
From now through 2010 and beyond, they are pushing ahead with plans for hybrids, electric cars, cleaner diesels, and even, further down the road, fuel-cell vehicles (see "Japan's Green Drive"). The days when auto executives mocked the Prius as a loss-making fad seem long past. "Without focusing on measures to address global warming and energy issues, there can be no future for our auto business," Katsuaki Watanabe, Toyota's president, said at an environmental forum in Tokyo on June 11.


Toyota Takes a Long-Term View
Toyota will start production of Camry hybrids in Thailand next year and in Australia from 2010, and is already building a new factory in Japan for nickel-metal hydride batteries used in today's hybrids. "Toyota will continue to increase production of its current hybrid technology and should be selling over 800,000 units a year before we even see the first Chevy Volt," says Kurt Sanger, an analyst at Deutsche Bank (DB) in Tokyo.

Toyota is also looking beyond the next-generation lithium-ion battery: A special battery-research division it set up in June will start off with 100 engineers, but their numbers will double by 2010. The fruits of these researchers' labors may not emerge until 2030, according to some Japanese press reports (BusinessWeek.com, 6/12/08).

Japan's No. 2 automaker, Honda (HMC), is also turning up the heat. In hybrids, Honda will launch several new models, and expects to be cranking out 500,000 gas-electric cars not long after 2010 (BusinessWeek.com, 5/21/08).

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/cont...

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.

“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/us/polit...

A group of cardiologists recently had a proposition for Dr. Andrew Rosenblatt, who runs a busy heart clinic in San Francisco: Would he join them in buying a CT scanner, a $1 million machine that produces detailed images of the heart?

The scanner would give Dr. Rosenblatt a new way to look inside patients’ arteries, enable his clinic to market itself as having the latest medical technology and provide extra revenue.

Although tempted, Dr. Rosenblatt was reluctant. CT scans, which are typically billed at $500 to $1,500, have never been proved in large medical studies to be better than older or cheaper tests. And they expose patients to large doses of radiation, equivalent to at least several hundred X-rays, creating a small but real cancer risk.

Dr. Rosenblatt worried that he and other doctors in his clinic would feel pressure to give scans to people who might not need them in order to pay for the equipment, which uses a series of X-rays to produce a composite picture of a beating heart.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/business...

The McKinsey Global Institute has published another terrific piece of analysis, “The carbon productivity challenge: curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth.”

MGI is best known for its comprehensive cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures (reprinted below), which came to the stunning conclusion that the measures needed to stabilize emissions at 450 pppm have a net cost near zero. The new report has its own stunning conclusion:

In fact, depending on how new low-carbon infrastructure is financed, the transition to a low-carbon economy may increase annual GDP growth in many countries.

The new analysis explains that “at a global, macroeconomic level, the costs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy are not, in an economic ‘welfare’ sense, all that daunting — even with currently known technologies.” Indeed, 70% of the total 2030 emissions reduction potential (below $60 a ton of CO2 equivalent) is “not dependent on new technology.”



.....more

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/27/must...

CIBC World Markets has just released a stunning yet detailed economic analysis of near-term oil prices and impacts.



The two key pieces are “Getting off the Road–Adjusting to $7 per Gallon Gas in America” and “Oil and Growth–That 70s show Re-Run“. Main points:

“That additional 200,000 barrels per day pledged from Saudi Arabia is a pittance compared to the four million barrels per day this year that depletion will hive off world production. What little increase in production Saudi is capable of will probably all be gobbled up by that country’s own voracious appetite for energy.”

China’s recent oil subsidy drop? Another yawner: “Most North Americans would gladly line up at the pumps for China’s now $3.25 a gallon gas.”

“The only supply response to date has been yet another round of cost overruns and lengthy project delays running the gamut from Canadian oil sands to deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells.”

“With the basic laws of supply and demand no longer operative in crude oil markets,” CIBC is”compelled to once again raise our target prices for oil” to “an average price of $200 per barrel by 2010.” That “should translate into a near-$7 per gallon pump price within two years, a 70% increase from today’s already record levels.”

“Higher oil prices spell stagflation for the US economy next year” and beyond. The report has a good analysis of why “The US economy has managed to avoid feeling the full brunt of oil prices over the last few years, but 2009 will be the year that its luck runs out.”

The analysis seems very solid and suggests the only thing that can “save” us from near-$7 gas by 2010 is a major global recession, but even that would only be a temporary respite. The implications for Detroit is staggering:



“Over the next four years, we are likely to witness the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history. By 2012, there should be some 10 million fewer vehicles on American roadways than there are today–a decline that dwarfs all previous adjustments including those during the two OPEC oil shocks.” The report has a very interesting analysis of vehicle scrappage trends versus new vehicle sales that I hadn’t seen before. This is going to be a double whammy on Detroit — lower overall vehicle sales, and plummeting SUV and light-truck sales.



................more.............

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/26/must... /

the link (here)....

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/25/hans...

Source: McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Military officials came under withering attack Tuesday in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans, who expressed anger and astonishment that a 21-year-old Miami Beach man with a spot on a State Department "watch list" and a history of failing to deliver on military contracts was awarded a $298 million deal to provides arms to allied forces in Afghanistan.

A congressional investigation found that Efraim Diveroli — who's now 22 — was granted the contract even though he, his company, AEY, and a supplier he worked with were on a State Department watch list for suspicious international arms dealers, said Rep. Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The California Democrat said that the awarding of the contract revealed a "fundamentally flawed system," noting that Defense Department officials had overlooked AEY's "long record of failed and dubious performance." That record, as compiled by the committee, included delivering damaged helmets to Iraq, falsely blaming a hurricane in Miami for failing to deliver 10,000 pistols to Iraq's security forces and delivering the wrong model of laser pointer and rifle attachments to the U.S Embassy in Colombia.

"It appears that anyone — no matter how inexperienced or unqualified — can win a lucrative federal contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars," Waxman said, adding that it was "hard to imagine a less-qualified company than AEY."


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/...

Source: (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.

James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."



Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i3NLY5n...

Twenty years ago today, before he became America’s top climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen was among the first to warn Congress and the nation about the dangers of human-caused global warming. For a new analysis of that testimony, see Grist here.

Hansen just spoke at the National Press Club. He is also giving a briefing to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming. Looks like C-SPAN will skip both. Sad.

You can see look at his presentation and recent postings on his website. Here are some words of wisdom from his speech today:


This is not a time to celebrate. Emissions just keep going up.

You may have seen a lot of ads on TV about clean energy. It’s greenwashing.

Contrary to what you may have read on some blogs — we are not entering a global ice age. The world continues to warm even though we had a cold winter thanks mainly to La Niña.

I preferred to do science then communicate with the public after 1988 until 2004. At that time I realize there was a huge gap between what is understood by scientists vs. what is known by public

Planetary emergency because of tipping points.

>> 99% confidence that the dangerous level of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is 350 ppm.

Yes, we can overshoot 350 ppm, but only on a timescale of decades.

We must get back below 350 ppm to preserve civilization.

We have reached one tipping point. We will lose all summer ice in Arctic over the next 5 to 10 years.

And that endangers Greenland ice sheet, whose mass loss accelerating.

The subtropics have expanded in size — that is desertification

The glaciers are receding. hundreds of millions of people will lose their reservoir of water for summer/fall. We have a few more decades before they’re all gone.

The less oil production the better.

We must phase out coal by 2030 and go to carbon-free energy.We need a low-loss high voltage DC electric grid.

Basic conflict today is between fossil fuel special interests and young people/unborn/nature

The disinformation campaign today borders on crimes against humanity. We do know the consequences of inaction.

Drilling off the Outer Continental shelf is exactly the wrong thing to do. A crazy thing. Extends the addiction (a little).

Geoengineering is a last resort. You wouldn’t want to go down that path.

Nothing about the climate system that says it has to be stable. Sea level stable 7000 years. We have been in the ice “sweet zone”: Stable Ice sheets on Greenland, antarctica, ice covering the artic sea but not the continents.

450 ppm gets us an ice free planet.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/23/dril...

Of course, plenty of M.D.'s do know which prescription and over-the-counter drugs are duds, dangers, or both. So we asked them, "Which medications would you skip?" Their list is your second opinion. If you're on any of these meds, talk to your doctor. Maybe he or she will finally open that big red book with all the dust on it.

Advair
It's asthma medicine ... that could make your asthma deadly. Advair contains the long-acting beta-agonist (LABA) salmeterol. A 2006 analysis of 19 trials, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that regular use of LABAs can increase the severity of an asthma attack. Because salmeterol is more widely prescribed than other LABAs, the danger is greater — the researchers estimate that salmeterol may contribute to as many as 5,000 asthma-related deaths in the United States each year. In 2006, similarly disturbing findings from an earlier salmeterol study prompted the FDA to tag Advair with a "black box" warning — the agency's highest caution level.


Avandia
Diabetes is destructive enough on its own, but if you try to control it with rosiglitazone — better known by the brand name Avandia — you could be headed for a heart attack. Last September, a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study found that people who took rosiglitazone for at least a year increased their risk of heart failure or a heart attack by 109 percent and 42 percent, respectively, compared with those who took other oral diabetes medications or a placebo.

Celebrex

Ketek
Most bacteria in the lungs and sinuses don't stand a chance against Ketek, but you might not either. This antibiotic, which has traditionally been prescribed for respiratory-tract infections, carries a higher risk of severe liver side effects than similar antibiotics do. "Ketek can cause heart-rhythm problems, can lead to liver disease, and could interact poorly with other medications you may be taking," says Dr. Rodgers.

Prilosec and Nexium
Heartburn can be uncomfortable, but heart attacks can be fatal, which is why the FDA has investigated a suspected link between cardiac trouble and the acid-reflux remedies Prilosec and Nexium.

Visine Original
What possible harm to your peepers could come from these seemingly innocuous eyedrops? "Visine gets the red out, but it does so by shrinking blood vessels, just like Afrin shrinks the vessels in your nose," says Thomas Steinemann, M.D., a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Overuse of the active ingredient tetrahydrozoline can perpetuate the vessel dilating-and-constricting cycle and may cause even more redness.

Pseudoephedrine
Forget that this decongestant can be turned into methamphetamine. People with heart disease or hypertension should watch out for any legitimate drug that contains pseudoephedrine. See, pseudoephedrine doesn't just constrict the blood vessels in your nose and sinuses; it can also raise blood pressure and heart rate, setting the stage for vascular catastrophe. Over the years, pseudoephedrine has been linked to heart attacks and strokes. "Pseudoephedrine can also worsen symptoms of benign prostate disease and glaucoma," says Dr. Rodgers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24777955

More Than 90 Percent of Americans Believe in God, Study Finds
One in Five Self-Proclaimed Athiests Express Faith in Higher Power

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 23, 2008; 12:00 PM



More than 90 percent of Americans -- including one in five people who say they are atheists -- believe in God or a universal power, and more than half pray at least once a day, according to results of a poll released today that takes an in-depth look at Americans' religious beliefs.

......

Two-thirds of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 22 percent of Mormons. Also, 77 percent of historically black churches are Democrats or lean Democratic, while only one-third of evangelical churches are Democrats or lean Democraic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- All Lyle Petersen wanted to do was get his mail.

In the time it took him to walk down his driveway in Fort Collins, Colorado, chat briefly with a neighbor and return to his house, Petersen got infected with a potentially serious mosquito-borne illness called West Nile virus. Within hours of being bitten, he said, he began to feel symptoms he recognized.

And how was he sure so quickly? Petersen, as director of the division of vector borne diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the foremost experts in the world on the condition. A blood test confirmed his suspicion.

"From my own experience, I can tell you it's not a very mild illness," Petersen cautioned. "It will ruin your summer."

"People tend to discount this as a significant problem," Petersen said, "but more than 1.5 million people have been infected so far in the United States, and about 300,000 have had West Nile fever."

......

The symptoms range from mild to severe and typically develop between three and 14 days after a person is bitten.

Debbie Koma, a 50-year old hairdresser from Atlanta, Georgia, developed West Nile virus two years ago. She described it as "unlike anything that I ever had before. I was sick as a dog."

She recalled being hospitalized for three days with a high fever, a horrible headache and body aches. After 14 days, she was strong enough to get out of bed, but she says her strength didn't fully return for three months.

Petersen had a similar experience when he was stricken five years ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/...

Source: MarketWatch

Brokers threatened by run on shadow bank system
Regulators eye $10 trillion market that boomed outside traditional banking
By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch

Last update: 2:37 p.m. EDT June 20, 2008SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)

-- A network of lenders, brokers and opaque financing vehicles outside traditional banking that ballooned during the bull market now is under siege as regulators threaten a crackdown on the so-called shadow banking system.


Big brokerage firms like Goldman Sachs which some say are the biggest players in this non-bank financial network, may have the most to lose from stricter regulation.

The shadow banking system grew rapidly during the past decade, accumulating more than $10 trillion in assets by early 2007. That made it roughly the same size as the traditional banking system, according to the Federal Reserve.

While this system became a huge and vital source of money to fuel the U.S. economy, the subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing credit crunch exposed a major flaw. Unlike regulated banks, which can borrow directly from the government and have federally insured customer deposits, the shadow system didn't have reliable access to short-term borrowing during times of stress.


Read more: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/big-...

Since I'm in Oklahoma, I go to the Oklahoma gardening forum on Garden Web and a lady(okiedawn) on this forum provides a tremendous amount of information on all types of gardening. It's fun to read her posts and if you live in Oklahoma or close by, she might be able help with some of your garden problems.

Here are two of her posts on Neem Oil and dried molasses

Neem Oil

Posted by okiedawn Z7 OK (My Page) on Tue, Jun 17, 08 at 8:53

Mick,
I have mixed feelings about the use of Neem, but it is one of the more effective organic products available. It is OMRI-approved although I believe their guidelines define it as a tool in Integrated Pest Management programs which is to be used only after milder methods or rememdies have been tried without success. However, it can burn plant foliage if applied at temperatures above 90 degrees, so keep that in mind. And, in fact, here in our climate, I think Neem and some other foliar products (including insecticidal soaps and superfine horticultural oils) can burn at significantly lower temperatures--more like 80 degrees than 90 degrees.

Neem is derived from the Neem tree, which is native to Burma and India and grows in many tropical areas. The Neem tree, by the way, is related to Chinaberry and Mahoghany. Extracts of the neem leaves and/or seeds are used as a natural pesticide. Some extracts from neem bark are used in some products as well.

Neem is is antibacterial, a fungicide and a pesticide. However, it is NOT a systemic pesticide if used as a foliar spray. It IS a long-lasting systemic insecticide on pests located in soil if used as a soil drench.

much more......

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/ok...

Using Dried Molasses in the Garden

Posted by okiedawn Z7 OK (My Page) on Thu, Jun 19, 08 at 12:01


In a different thread, Jill mentioned hearing an "old-timer" who had converted from chemical methods of gardening to organic gardening talking about using dried molasses. And, it occurred to me, that I probably seldom if ever mention molasses, which is an important soil restorative often used by organic gardeners. So, I thought I'd discuss it a little here.
WHAT ORGANIC GARDENING REALLY IS:

A lot of people call themselves organic gardeners because they don't use pesticides or fertilizers of chemical origin, and only use those of organic origin. That is a good start, but organic gardening is so much more.

Organic gardeners understand that EVERYTHING starts with the soil. Thus, they do many, many things to maintain healthy soil. This includes adding organic materials like compost, rock and mineral powders (like soft rock phosphate, greensand and lava sand), etc. It also includes doing whatever you can to encourage healthy soil that is ALIVE. Soil is not a dead, inert material (well, it can be, if it has been heavily farmed chemically). Good soil is alive and teeming with many, many microorganisms that contribute greatly to soil health. These microorganisms include but are not limited to bacteria (there's good bacteria, you know), fungi, algae, nematodes (there's good nematodes too), protozoa, and actinomycetes If these microorganisms are missing from your soil, your soil is not healthy enough.

much more.......

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/ok...

By any measure, the United States spends an enormous amount of money on health care. Here are a few of those measures. Last year, U.S. health care spending exceeded 16% of the nation’s GDP. To put U.S. spending into perspective: the United States spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in 2004, while Canada spent 9.9%, France 10.7%, Germany 10.9%, Sweden 9.1%, and the United Kingdom 8.7%. Or consider per capita spending: the United States spent $6,037 per person in 2004, compared to Canada at $3,161, France at $3,191, Germany at $3,169, and the U.K. at $2,560.

By now the high overall cost of health care in the United States is broadly recognized. And many Americans are acutely aware of how much they pay for their own care. Those without health insurance face sky-high doctor and hospital bills and ever more aggressive collection tactics—when they receive care at all. Those who are fortunate enough to have insurance experience steep annual premium hikes along with rising deductibles and co-pays, and, all too often, a well-founded fear of losing their coverage should they lose a job or have a serious illness in the family.

Still, Americans may well underestimate the degree to which they subsidize the current U.S. health care system out of their own pockets. And almost no one recognizes that even people without health insurance pay substantial sums into the system today. If more people understood the full size of the health care bill that they as individuals are already paying—and for a system that provides seriously inadequate care to millions of Americans—then the corporate opponents of a universal single-payer system might find it far more difficult to frighten the public about the costs of that system. In other words, to recognize the advantages of a single-payer system, we have to understand how the United States funds health care and health research and how much it actually costs us today.

Paying through the Taxman

The U.S. health care system is typically characterized as a largely private-sector system, so it may come as a surprise that more than 60% of the $2 trillion annual U.S. health care bill is paid through taxes, according to a 2002 analysis published in Health Affairs by Harvard Medical School associate professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein. Tax dollars pay for Medicare and Medicaid, for the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service. Tax dollars pay for health coverage for federal, state, and municipal government employees and their families, as well as for many employees of private companies working on government contracts. Less visible but no less important, the tax deduction for employer-paid health insurance, along with other health care-related tax deductions, also represents a form of government spending on health care. It makes little difference whether the government gives taxpayers (or their employers) a deduction for their health care spending, on the one hand, or collects their taxes then pays for their health care, either directly or via a voucher, on the other. Moreover, tax dollars also pay for critical elements of the health care system apart from direct care—Medicare funds much of the expensive equipment hospitals use, for instance, along with all medical residencies.

All told, then, tax dollars already pay for at least $1.2 trillion in annual U.S. health care expenses. Since federal, state, and local governments collect about $3.48 trillion annually in taxes of all kinds—income, sales, property, corporate—that means that more than one third (34.4%) of the aggregate tax revenues collected in the United States go to pay for health care.

............

Getting What We’ve Already Paid For

Americans spend more than anyone else in the world on health care. Each health insurer adds its bureaucracy, profits, high corporate salaries, advertising, and sales commissions to the actual cost of providing care. Not only is this money lost to health care, but it pays for a system that often makes it more difficult and complicated to receive the care we’ve already paid for. Shareholders are the primary clients of for-profit insurance companies, not patients. Moreover, households’ actual costs as a percentage of their incomes are far higher today than most imagine. Even families with no health insurance contribute substantially to our health care system through taxes. Recognizing these hidden costs that U.S. households pay for health care today makes it far easier to see how a universal single-payer system—with all of its obvious advantages—can cost most Americans less than the one we have today


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/how_muc...