"The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication ..."
Source"According to the FDA, 17% of the American diet comes out of cans, and many of those have an epoxy liner made with Bisphenol A, a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women ... The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half of them, at levels they call "200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals."
Source"Though drivers across the nation are smarting from the rising price of gas, it is taking a particularly harsh toll here in Wilcox County, where the median household income is $17,500. A recent report by the Oil Price Information Service estimated that residents spend more than 13% of their monthly income on gas -- the highest ratio in the nation. ... William Coleman, 53, has been driving the 30 miles to and from his plywood mill job for 17 years. To save on gas, he has recently taken to sleeping in the boiler room between 12-hour shifts. Coleman usually stays overnight twice a week, leaving his wife to deal with the two grandchildren they are raising."
Source"Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems."
Source"Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets. Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought "shares" of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work."
Source"In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky."
Source"GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent ... the physiology of plants [is] now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved."
Source"Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are slated to build about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades."
Source"Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry. How Three Regions Are Coping"
Source"Researchers have found alarming evidence that the frozen Arctic floor has started to thaw and release long-stored methane gas. The results could be a catastrophic warming of the earth, since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. ... Russian polar scientists have strong evidence that the first stages of melting are underway. They've studied largest shelf sea in the world, off the coast of Siberia, where the Asian continental shelf stretches across an underwater area six times the size of Germany, before falling off gently into the Arctic Ocean. ... In the permafrost bottom of the 200-meter-deep sea, enormous stores of gas hydrates lie dormant in mighty frozen layers of sediment."
Source" * One wedge of vehicle efficiency -- all cars getting 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.
* One of wind for power -- one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines.
* One of wind for vehicles -- another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
* Three of concentrated solar thermal -- about 5000 GW peak.
* Three of efficiency -- one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million gwh.
* One of coal with carbon capture and storage -- 800 GW of coal with CCS.
* One of nuclear power -- 700 GW plus 10 Yucca mountains for storage.
* One of solar photovoltaics -- 2000 GW peak (or less PV and some geothermal, tidal, and ocean thermal).
* One of cellulosic biofuels -- using one-sixth of the world's cropland (or less land if yields significantly increase or algae-to-biofuels proves commercial at large scale).
* Two of forestry -- End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.
* One of soils -- Apply no-till farming to all existing croplands."
Source"Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests ... the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age."
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