Sorry if “douchebag” is an offensive term to anyone.   This level of idiocy and blatant disregard for law and order and the rights and lives of others is simply too disgusting to not use such a word.

Via MSNBC:

Greenpeace Closes Down BP Petrol Stations in Central London Energy Protest

LONDON – As BP CEO Tony Hayward resigned under a cloud Tuesday, thousands of British motorists got an unexpected reminder of the oil spill that’s wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Mexico.

Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace said they shut off fuel supplies at 46 BP gas stations across London just in time for the morning rush-hour. Small teams of activists used a standard shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel oil at the targeted stations. The switches were then removed to prevent most BP outlets in the capital from opening.

And to ensure there was no chance of drivers buying gas, demonstrators in fluorescent vests and helmets locked green metal fences around some sites.

“What BP needs to do is not just change CEOs it needs to actually come up with a new strategy,” Greenpeace U.K.’s chief executive John Sauven said at one of the shuttered stations in Camden, north London.

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For a good while it looked like funding of homeopathy through NHS, the national government-sponsored health-care system in the UK was going to finally end.   An MP report on the subject was predictably very strongly against continued funding, nearly every member of the medical establishment who commented on the issue was firmly against homeopathy and various British skeptic and pro-science groups seized the moment to show how worthless homeopathy is.  The British Medical Association firmly backed the removal of funding for homeopathy by government programs.

The big blow to homeopathy came earlier this year when a select committee of the British Parliament published their findings, concluding that homeopathy is no more useful than placebo and does not deserve continued funding.  (Well, yeah, thanks Captain Obvious.)

Yes, it looked like the tax payers of the UK would finally be able to avoid paying for expensive water in perfume bottles.  Or so it seemed…

Via OnMedica:

DH commits to continue NHS funding of homeopathy
NHS funding for homeopathic treatments will continue, despite a highly critical report published by MPs earlier this year.

MPs on the parliamentary science and technology select committee published a report on homeopathy in February, which urged the government to withdraw NHS funding for such treatments and for the medicines regulator to stop licensing homeopathic products.

Both proposals were rejected this week by the Department of Health as it published its official response to the report.

Homeopathy has been funded on the NHS since the service began in 1948 and there are four homeopathic hospitals in the UK, in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow.

It is estimated that the NHS spends around £4 million a year on homeopathy.

The select committee’s report said there was no conclusive evidence that homeopathic drugs were any more effective than a placebo and given that existing scientific literature showed no good evidence of efficacy, further clinical trials of homeopathy could not be justified.

The committee said it believed homeopathy was a placebo treatment.

To prescribe these treatments was damaging the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship and because the effect of homeopathy was unreliable and unpredictable, it should not form the sole basis of any treatment on the NHS.

The MPs also wanted the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to stop licensing homeopathic products because they were allowing these products to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy.

The BMA at its annual conference in June voted overwhelmingly for a motion that said homeopathic remedies should be banned on the NHS and taken off pharmacy shelves where they are sold as medicines.

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Molten salt is great for nuclear reactors, but it can’t do much for solar…

Via Business Green:

What is claimed to be the world’s first solar thermal concentration plant to use molten salt as the heat transfer fluid has been opened by Italian energy company Enel in Sicily.

The 5MW Archimede plant – named after the rows of huge parabolic mirrors used to capture the sun’s rays – is also claimed to be the first to integrate a combined-cycle gas facility and a solar thermal power plant for electricity generation.

The solar thermal power plant comprises a field of about 30,000m2 of mirrors that concentrate sunlight on to 5.4km of pipe carrying the molten salt fluid. The thermal energy harvested by the system produces high-pressure steam that is channelled into the turbines of the power plant to produce electricity, reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and, as a result, enhancing the environmental performance of the combined-cycle plant.

The solar collectors (the parabolic mirrors and pipes or receivers), together with a steam generator and two heat storage tanks – one cold and one hot – make up the solar portion of the system.

When the sun shines, the thermal fluid drawn from the cold tank is circulated through the network of parabolic collectors, where it is heated to a temperature of 550°C and injected into the hot tank, where the thermal energy is stored. The fluid is then drawn from the hot reservoir to produce steam at high pressure and temperature, which is sent to Enel’s nearby combined-cycle plant, where it contributes to electricity generation.

The molten salts used in the system are a mixture of sodium nitrates and potassium, which can retain heat for prolonged periods. This enables the plant to generate electricity at any time of the day and in all weather conditions until the stored energy is depleted.

To be precise, this is not the first time molten salts have been used in a solar power application. The supposed claim to fame here is that molten salts are being used for heat collection, heat transfer and storage, where as in the past they were usually limited to heat storage. Also, this is supposed to be a real “power plant,” as opposed to a research facility, as this has been done before in various prototype and pilot plant locations.

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In 1979 Three Mile Island experienced a partial meltdown of one of its reactor cores due to a coolant system failure and operator error.   The actual reactor vessel, though internally damaged, held, and the additional layers of protection offered by the containment structure also held, but were not even needed.   Nobody died, nobody was injured, no property outside the plant was damaged.   To this day, many hold it up as an example of the horrors of nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, a form of “renewable” energy around the country has been destroying homes and snuffing out lives from the very beginning with little fanfare.

The Lake Delhi dam was built in the 1920’s as a hydroelectric generating facility.   In the late 1960’s, the facility began to show its age and the operator didn’t have the capital to replace or refurbish the turbines, leading to most of the electrical generating capacity going offline in 1973.   Had the Delhi dam been a nuclear facility, the owners would have been required to have a fund set aside for its decommissioning, thus assuring that it would not be left a derelict hulk that endangers the community.

But it wasn’t nuclear, so there it sat, turbines rusting and no power being produced.   Instead, operations of the dam were turned over to the “Lake Delhi Recreational Association,” who apparently had no interest in generating electricity  and was not at all equipped to maintain or repair the dam.  The former hydroelectric dam, which held back a ten mile long lake seems to have sat under the control of the equivalent of a neighborhood association, and received little if any maintenance or inspection.

Although hydropower is a good economic and renewable source of energy, no government subsidies jumped in to repair the dam and thus several private attempts to repair the dam and put it back into service generating power went bust over the years.

Finally in 2008, it seemed that the plant would be brought back online.   It had the potential to generate electricity, but since it was not wind or solar, it took a while to get regulatory approval to even begin the refurbishment for power generation.   Yes, that’s right, the process to just get approval to begin refurbishment takes years!

By 2010, it looked like the plant was about ready to come back online.   Unfortunately, as it was being refurbished it was discovered that the years of neglect had not been kind to the Delhi dam and was in worse shape than anyone could have imagined.   Sediment had built up against the dam, at least one gate was severely damaged by a past flood and the integrity of the dam was called into question.  In 2009, the Federal Government allocated 2.5 million for critical repairs on the dam, in part because of the safety issue it presented.   The state of Iowa came up with another one hundred thousand dollars to begin a dredging and improvement plan last April.

But apparently, it wasn’t enough, because this morning, this happened:

Right now, how much damage this dam failure has caused remains unknown.   Details are sketchy, but officials are already calling it “catastrophic.”    At least a few homes are already reported destroyed and upwards of 700 could be in danger.    At least fifty homes have already reported some level of damage and the flood has also been blamed for extensive power outages.  Due to evacuations, it is hoped that deaths will be avoided.

The dam was not a nuclear facility, however, so don’t expect to read about this on the front page of the newspaper.  In fact, don’t expect to read about it on the second page either.   It may not even make the first section of your newspaper and if you don’t live in the US, it likely won’t make it to your newspaper at all.    After all, it’s just a dam and those fail all the time.   Small consolation to those whose lives have been washed away.

At least it was only water and not coal ash.

Note, this article deals directly with American energy policy and therefore may seem American-centric to some, but that’s simply because of the context of this policy

Ethanol is just another way of saying ethyl alcohol, which is generally the type of alcohol that a person means when they use the term “alcohol” in common conversation.   It’s the exact same stuff that gives liquor its kick.   If you’ve ever woken up with someone you don’t remember going to bed with, vomited all over your prom dress or photocopied your buttocks at an office Christmas party, it was probably because of alcohol.

Ethanol is also used as a motor fuel, most often as an additive to gasoline.   In the United States, ethanol is now standard in most gasoline.   The current standard for ethanol is 10% ethanol to 90% gasoline.   Nearly all the ethanol found in US fuel comes from the fermentation and distillation of corn.   Corn is a reasonably good crop for ethanol production, because it’s rich in starch and sugars and a large volume of corn can be grown per acre of land.    Still, ethanol production is far from economical and as things currently stand, it would be all but it would be all but impossible to make money on production of ethanol fuel if not for extremely generous government subsidies and requirements that it be added to gasoline, whether or not the gasoline seller or the buyer of the fuel actually wants it.

Indeed the ethanol industry has become a prime example of environmental policy that sure seemed good at the outset, but has turned out to be disastrous.    Ethanol’s proponents point out that it is produced domestically, as opposed to petroleum which is largely imported.   While this is true, the total economics of ethanol are actually quite poor.  It’s considerably more expensive and more energy intensive to produce than petroleum, so there’s no economic benefit to the nation by using it.  It uses vast areas of land, huge amounts of fertilizer and enormous quantities of energy to produce ethanol and worst of all, it competes directly for resources with food crops, potentially driving up the price of critical staple crops.

As it has become more and more difficult to hide the dark side of ethanol, it the industry has been fighting tooth and nail to maintain (or even increase) the extremely generous government handouts that it has needed to remain solvent and make money with an inherently inferior and more expensive product.   The US government is currently borrowing money at a rate greater than any other time in history (yes, even World War II!) and handouts to industries that do no good for anyone other than themselves would seem like a good place to cut back.   For those making ethanol, this could mean the end of the gravy train.

Via The Associated Press:

Ethanol industry scrambles to keep incentives
WASHINGTON – The once-popular ethanol industry is scrambling to hold onto billions of dollars in government subsidies, fighting an increasing public skepticism of the corn-based fuel and wariness from lawmakers who may divert the money to other priorities.

The industry itself can’t agree on how to persuade Congress to keep the subsidies, which now come in the form of tax credits worth about $6 billion annually.

One industry group, Growth Energy, made the bold move Thursday of calling for the tax credits to be phased out completely in favor of spending the money on more flex-fuel cars and gasoline pumps that support ethanol. A rival group, the Renewable Fuels Association, said it’s too late in the year to make such proposals — the tax credits expire at the end of the year, and legislative days are numbered.

As the industry bickers over what to do, Congress is signaling it’s growing tired of paying for ethanol. The House Ways and Means Committee is considering slashing the tax credit by 9 cents a gallon, from 45 cents to 36 cents, when it looks at a wide range of energy tax credits as early as next week. That would be the second cut in the credit in as many years.

A key senator also expressed skepticism this week. Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Democratic chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a longtime supporter of renewable fuels, said Congress should “weigh all factors, including the credit’s very high cost to taxpayers,” when looking to extend the credit. Bingaman noted that the ethanol industry is protected by congressional mandates for its use.

Some supporters say they see the writing on the wall.

“The longer we have this support structure in place for ethanol, the more people begin to question it,” said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, which supports Growth Energy’s plan. He says a new approach is needed as the public becomes more skeptical.

This is not the only place that the ethanol industry is working the politicians. They would also like to see higher concentrations of the fuel added to standard gasoline sold at thousands of gas stations in the United States. Today most gasoline has about 10% ethanol added, although specialty blends of up to 85% ethanol is available at a few service stations.

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What can I say?   This is absolutely sickening.  Granted that those who oppose vaccination and spread lies in an attempt to stop vaccination of children takes a very perverted and unethical kind of person.   Still, the very idea that they could be so committed to trying to further their own agenda that they would actually confront and harass the parents of a child who had just died of an infectious disease takes things to a new level of cruelty.

Perhaps the leadership of the AVN really is insane enough to believe what they are saying.   However, even if that is so, it in no way justifies attacking people who have just gone through the kind of loss and pain most of us could never even imagine.   Their motive is clear and could not be more callous or self-serving – to try to preserve any credibility they think they still have by going after their opponents, regardless of who they are or how much they have suffered already.

This kind of behavior transcended the issue of bad science and incorrect medical advice.  It shocks and offends the conscious of any person with a sense of decency.  It offends the values of humanity and sympathy.   This is intolerable and just plain wrong. No person who engages in such actions should ever be seem as anything other than a sociopath and a self-serving, callous fraud.

There can be no doubt that this is simply a very dishonest operation run by a very dishonest woman who does not care what she says or does to promote herself. And all this comes from a group which touts itself as being a sympathetic, pro-family and pro-health organization.

It’s revolting.   It does, however, remind me of another post on here a while ago.

Oh I just love seeing a post like this on a site like “Age Of Autism”, an anti-vaccine, anti-science site that promotes every wacky idea on how to treat autism and what causes it.

Health Fascism in Australia.

The sinister Skeptics group, agents of what used to be CSICOP now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organised from the US and linked to the major corporate lobby groups, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and American Council Against Health Fraud (ACAHF), which is in turn linked to the Australian CAHF) are making ground in Australia. Supported by authoritarian ideological influences in government and Big Pharma, the Skeptics are running constant attacks on homeopathy, natural cancer treatments, those who question vaccination and those who support any form of alternative medicine.

With the present world fiscal crisis, all those linked to Big Pharma and Science are fighting a bitter battle to preserve drug company competitiveness. But where fascist influences in government and health with most force come together is in attacking anyone who speaks out about freedom of choice and expression in relation to vaccination.

Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). In 2009, one of their trolls, a lay person with no standing in medicine or government complained about the web site of the AVN to the office of the State Government funded Health Care Complaints commission (HCCC) an organisation that accepts complaints against groups found be giving out false information about health.

The remit of the HCCC, did not actually cover parent groups which discussed the pros and cons of vaccination, so the State government slightly changed the remit to satisfy the Skeptics. The government then proceeded with a year long investigation into Meryl Dorey the woman who established and runs the AVN and the AVN itself.

Dorey was asked to answer their first 30 odd page report against her and the organisation, within a few weeks. She did this with a magnificent document that argued every point with brilliance. The complaint investigation actually argued against almost every sentence that had appeared on the AVN web site. If the AVN had said that vaccines contained toxic elements, such as mecury and aluminuim the HCCC argued with pseudo science that this was not true, giving pages of bogus evidence to support the vaccine manufacturers.

Oh how very sinister!
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Back from The Amazing Meeting 8, which was indeed Amazing, I’ve found a pile of work to get to even as I get over the modest jetlag that traveling across three time zones will cause.   Luckilly, I don’t have to describe the event all by myself because others have.   Better still, my friends at the Greater Edmonton Skeptics Society (GESS) have put together a roundup of links from other blogs and news sites describing the amazing events of the Amazing Meeting!

Check it out here

Having returned from Las Vegas and The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference on skepticism hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundaton, I’ve been very eager to start posting about my experiences at the meeting.   Unfortunately, I’ve been fairly busy, as apparently going to Las Vegas for a week tends to result in a lot of work piling up.   In general, the meeting was attended by mainstream skeptics, who may not agree on everything but tended to agree on well proven things, like the fact that the US Apollo program did indeed send men to the moon and back.

This was not quite 100%, however, as at least one conspiracy-obsessed heckler did attend, and attempted repeatedly to heckle Phil Plait and Adam Savage.   Jarrah White is about as committed to the belief that the Apollo moon landings were faked as one can be.   He’s already produced (at last count) 393 Youtube videos on the subject – all of them absolutely stunning in their lack of technical and scientific knowledge.

I recognized White’s voice from the videos as soon as he got up to question Adam Savage. That snooty, nasal, sharp whine with an Australian accent was hard not to recognize, especially as I’ve seen plenty of his videos before. Apparently he came all the way from Australia to try to get up in the face of those who he considers the conspirators behind the faked moon landing

His behavior was about as strange as one might expect. I was concerned initially that he might try to rush the stage or do something else completely crazy – after all, Apollo conspiracy theorists have been known to physically threaten astronauts and do all manner of other crazy things. I alerted the staff and security to his background to be on the safe side, but luckily he didn’t try anything too violent.

Instead, he repeatedly insisted that he get a sit-down interview with Phil Plait. Phil was quite civil, and informed him that to get scheduled interview time he would need to register as press. The Amazing Meeting does not have very exclusive standards for who is given press status – bloggers and podcasters can easily get it. When he was asked for his information on this topic, he repeatedly made a scene about not wanting to reveal his background. I’m not sure how things worked out, but eventually he got a press pass and thus could get his interview. Unfortunately for him, Phil Plait decided to decline the request. After rudely interrupting Phil, who was trying to converse with others at the conference, the Little Dude from the Moon finally started yelling at Phil that he thought his answers were dishonest and he was a liar. Phil said something about how he didn’t believe he could say anything that would change the Little Dude’s mind and that if the Little Dude felt that way, he was not interested in sitting down for an interview.

I’m just glad that no punches were thrown. As he came from Australia, it seemed a reasonable concern that he would not want to make such a trip without getting in at least one dramatic moment or big confrontation. I did challenge him openly to a debate. He never responded to this. Surprised? In fact, I only saw him around on the first day of the three-day event. No word on whether he left early or went into hiding or what.
He has also already posted at least one video from the event:

It should be noted that Adam Savage is not an absolute expert on this topic. There is actually a greater context to this. Phil Plait may have been able to answer this, but Jarrah managed to burn that bridge a long time ago.

Debunking his ridiculous claim:

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For those who don’t know, I just got home from a week in Las Vegas where I attended The Amazing Meeting with The Amazing James Randi, Adam Savage, the Great Johnny Thompson, Dr. Michael Shermer, Phil Plait “The Bad Astronomer,” Richard Dawkins and numerous other world-renowned skeptics, critical thinkers and science promoters.

Of course, it was a hoot.   It also involved quite a bit of intellectual stimulation, partying, drinking, running around, socializing and precious little sleep or down time.   Now back home, I figured it was time to crash for the evening before a storm of posting on the meeting, all those who helped pull it off and what my thoughts are on the future of skepticism, which I will say, is quite bright.

Then this shit hit the presses…
Infants Ingest Nearly 80 Times Safe Level of Dioxin

Yes, it is the “Environmental Working Group,” who have managed to gain credibility and also get a lot of media attention by going after a variety of unproven and over-played environmental issues. They’re the same group that made a big stink about cell phone radiation levels without providing much reason why anyone should worry about them.

While dioxin is indeed worth concern, at least in some circumstances, the press release from the EWG is riddled with unsubstantiated claims.

But, I’m simply too tired. Anyone want to take a closer look at the data?