Germany Sets New Renewable Energy Record

Germany Sets New Renewable Energy Record:
Producing 20.8 percent of it's energy from renewables. And Germany is not a particularly sunny or windy place.
"So how Germany did it? In one word: Policy. In a report published earlier this year, Deutsche Bank provided some of the ingredients of the German successful recipe: Setting ambitious but attainable binding renewable energy and climate targets, integrating these targets into energy policies and linking the targets to comprehensive energy policy targets, creating incentives (feed-in tariffs for example) to minimize investor risks and drive costs down, and balancing constructive regulatory policy with flexibility by introducing policy incentives that can also be adjusted to reflect changing market conditions (for example, reducing solar feed-in tariff when solar costs are going down). It’s not surprising that the verdict of Deutsche Bank was: “We believe that Germany exhibits best in class climate and renewable energy policy structures.”

Germany’s push for renewable energy was motivated by a desire among politicians to act against climate change and reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Then, the growth of the renewable sector brought other incentives like energy security and job creation. Renewable energy garnered widespread political and public support." http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/09/generating-gloomy-news-germany-setting-new-record-renewable-energy-usage/?dhiti=1

Compost: the Safest Dog Waste Disposal System | Sierra Club Green Home

 If you are as disturbed as I am by the thought of landfills filled with little plastic bags of dog poop, check out instructions for a DIY dog waste composter in my article for Sierra Club Green Home.

Compost: the Safest Dog Waste Disposal System | Sierra Club Green Home:

'via Blog this'

Texas man Terry Lebleu invents drought master, machine that makes water out of air

Texas man Terry Lebleu invents drought master, machine that makes water out of air

54% of energy generated in the U.S. from Burning Dirty Coal, Petroleum, and Gas is lost.

We drill and spill and burn and pollute to get the energy and don't even use half of the energy that was generated.  

Charts of Energy and Consumption:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/chart-us-energy-use-reveals-oil-coal.php?campaign=weekly_nl

In addition,  the US currently uses about 19.7 million barrels of oil a day, 71% of which goes to transportation via cars, trucks, buses, airplanes. So, the longer we rely on the internal-combustion engine to fuel vehicles rather than electric cars, bikes and public transportation, the longer we stay dependent on drilling for those rapidly diminishing fossil fuels, which means more risky wells in deep water areas of the ocean and the inevitable occurrence of another disaster like the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

Our government spends $30 million a year for anti-cuba propaganda radio and TV broadcasts?

Which are blocked by the Cuban government so are heard by few people.  And yet they want to cut funds for CPB and thus NPR.

More info on Radio and TV Marti: http://www.coha.org/radio-and-tv-marti-should-be-prime-targets-for-budget-cutters/

Deciphering Date codes

I don't know what's wrong with simply using a common date formula, but most manufacturers have to put some code and few offer any explaination. The codes usually involve a Julian day of the year and one digit for the year i.e. 9 for 2009.  But not always. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason, so I'm going to gather what few I figure out.

Tires manufactured since 2000:  (You usually don't want tires older than 6 years)

Since 2000, the week and year the tire was produced has been provided by the last four digits of the Tire Identification Number with the 2 digits being used to identify the week immediately preceding the 2 digits used to identify the year.

Example:

DOT U2LL LMLR 5107		Manufactured during the 51st week of the year of 2007

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Ocean Beauty, canner of many brands of canned salmon and other fish, actually explain their 2-line code on their website in an easily found place. On the other hand, they use several different code formats for canned and pouched seafood. The canned doesn't involve a Julian date while the 3 different formats for pouches do. I found some canned Sockeye salmon at Big Lots for a very cheap price but wanted to make sure it was good. 

The third digit in the first line designates the year that the product was canned. The first three digits of the bottom line designate the month and day it was packaged. For example: if the top line of a code is 265CR - the third digit (#5) means 2005; With 908A for the second line, the first 3 digits (#'s 908) mean September 8th; So here the production date is 9/08/05, making the shelf-life best through 9/08/11. 

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The below is for Fruit of the Earth Aloe vera gel which I spotted at a dollar store.  I searched for a bit on their website with no luck, then wrote customer service for an explanation.  They also make aloe vera juice for which they use a completely different type of code.

1230239

123-this is our batch number.

023-this is the day of the year the product was manufactured –we use a Julian Calendar(January 23^rd)

9-this is the year the product was manufactured (2009)

Our products have a three year shelf life. If you add three year to the manufacture date of January 23, 2009 then the product would expire on January 23, 2012.

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Letter to John Cornyn

Head Start and Pell Grants aren't spending. They are investments.

You say we can't afford Head Start, Pell Grants, or to invest in Green energy and infrastructure, in other words, the future. But we can afford subsidies to corporations, big oil, grain farmers and to keep a military that's larger than what, the next 17 largest in the world combined?  Most of which are our allies!

The Republican way is destroying the middle class which will turn us into a third world country. It does not trickle down. It trickles up. We can't consume all the goods and services required to keep our phony economy afloat without either getting a bigger share of the income, or by living beyond our means as we have been doing for the past few decades. And which we can't do anymore.

If the wealthiest create jobs with this couple of percent less income tax they aren't paying then were are those jobs?  We had them under Clinton!

There is now far more upward mobility in most of the socialist countries in Europe. The American Dream is dead and we are becoming an economic dustbowl. And you did that. You, Reagan, and every administration and congress since Reagan.  Not Obama. Not liberals. Not socialist programs.

The rate of upward mobility is 3x greater in Denmark.  Denmark!  Where they've been pretty much doing the opposite of what we do here. That's what works.

I you aren't going to do anything about the wage disparity, then the least you could do is pay for our education and health care.

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http://generationxmagazine.com/money_finance/is-the-american-dream-alive-for-generation-x/
http://edsteinink.com/2011/03/26/class-warfare/
http://www.gapminder.org/
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Hourly-Rates-Report-20110323.pdf