Archive
Japan nuclear crisis on edge as toll of dead or missing surpasses 21,000 Radiation traces found in food and water
TOKYO — Japan hoped power lines restored to its stricken nuclear plant may help solve the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 21,000 people dead or missing.The Asian nation’s people are in shock at both the ongoing battle to avert deadly radiation at the six-reactor Fukushima plant and a still-rising death toll from the March 11 disaster.
The world’s third largest economy has suffered an estimated $250 billion of damage with entire towns in the northeast obliterated in Japan’s darkest moment since World War Two.
Tokyo’s markets are closed for a holiday on Monday.
Elsewhere, investors will be weighing risks to the global economy from Japan’s multiple crisis, along with conflict in Libya and other unrest in the Arab world.
Easing Japan’s gloom briefly, local TV showed one moving Read more…
SUBLIMINAL FLICKER Part II: Fluorescent Lights and Flicker Sensitivity
If you have incandescent light bulbs, I suggest you keep them… Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act Oh yeah if you did not know, ALL CFLs are Made in China. NOT ONE is produced in USA!
by Richard Conrad, Ph.D
Subliminal: below the threshold of conscious perception; inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response.
All types of fluorescent lights have some amount of flicker. Most of this flicker is invisible, at least to the conscious mind. Flicker is invisible when it consists of pulses or waves of light that repeat one after the other so rapidly that they appear to fuse together into steady light. Our flicker fusion frequency (the frequency above which we no longer consciously see flicker) ranges from about 25 to 55 Hz (Hz means times per second). Flicker fusion frequency varies with the person, with the intensity and color of the light, and also depends on where the light falls on the retina. Optic nerve signals proportional to flicker at frequencies far above the conscious flicker fusion frequency do reach our brain from the eye (as shown by EEG and other studies). Any invisibly flickering light that affects the brain is what I call Read more…
Population, Food, Oil … Collision?
World population and growth
Factoring the net birth minus death rate in the world each year, the annual increase to world population is about 75 million people. The current world population is about 6,900,000,000, or 6.9 billion.
Annually, we add to the planet the equivalent population of any of the following scenarios,
- New York City (9 of them!)
- Los Angeles (20 of them!)
- Chicago (27 of them!)
- San Francisco (94 of them!)
- Boston (117 of them!)
- Unites States of America (25 percent of the country!)
When you think about it, this is a startling number. And that’s in just one Read more…
Iran Pushing to Upgrade Enrichment Gear: IAEA
A forthcoming International Atomic Energy Agency report asserts Iran is pushing to replace thousands of its uranium enrichment centrifuges with newer carbon-fiber machines capable of operating five times faster than their predecessors, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Feb. 17).
(Feb. 18) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveils an experimental uranium enrichment centrifuge at a ceremony in Tehran last year. A forthcoming International Atomic Energy Agency report says Iran is working to deploy a new line of higher-speed centrifuges, according to diplomats (Behrouz Mehri/Getty Images).
Iran was purging electronics from its Natanz uranium enrichment complex and other atomic facilities after what appears to be an unsuccessful attempt to locate the origin of the Stuxnet computer worm infecting the sites, said diplomats with knowledge of the “militarization report” requested by IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano. Moving in new equipment might take as long as two years, the diplomats said.
Deploying its experimental carbon-fiber in large numbers could enable Iran to produce sufficient material for a nuclear weapon in under 12 weeks, Germany determined in an official assessment. The United States and its allies have expressed concern that Iran’s uranium enrichment program could generate nuclear-weapon material; Tehran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful (David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 18).
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department yesterday blacklisted an Iranian bank believed to be supporting the organization managing Read more…
NASA: Huge Solar Flare Jamming Radio And Satellite Signals, Could Affect Electric Grid, Bright Auroras Expected
According to NASA, a large solar eruption triggered a giant geomagnetic storm that has disturbed radio communications and could disrupt electrical power grids, radio and satellite communication in the next days
The calm before the storm. Three CMEs are enroute, all a part of the Radio Blackout events on February 13, 14, and 15 (UTC). The last of the three seems to be the fastest and may catch both of the forerunners about mid to late day tomorrow, February 17. Watch this space for updates on the impending — G2, possibly periods of G3 — geomagnetic storming.
Watch Today’s Space Weather for the most recent activity.
This is a composite image of the Sun at the moment of the X2.2 flare. Image courtesy of SDO
(NASA)
Credit: NASA/SDO
A strong wave of charged plasma particles emanating from the Jupiter-sized sun spot, the most powerful seen in four years, has already disrupted radio communication in southern China.
Solar Activity Forecast: Read more…
The What? And Why? Of Rare Earth Metals
Over the past few months, there’s been a buzz surrounding rare earth metals. These are metals such as europium, lanthanum, neodymium and 14 others found in small concentrations attached to other metals and resource deposits. They’re actually not that rare, just expensive and difficult to pull out of the ground.
These naturally occurring elements are essential in everything from wind turbines to lasers to iPads.
Rare earths are a conundrum for the environmentally conscious—they hold the key to green energies but create toxic waste when being separated away from other elements. “Just one wind turbine generating 3 megawatts of electricity requires 600 kilograms of rare earths for its magnets,” a source told the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper.
Electric and hybrid cars can contain more than twice as much rare earth metals as a standard car. This image from the NY Times breaks down how these metals make up critical elements of a Prius.
Currently, China controls 97 percent of the world’s production of rare earth metals. In October 2010, the country cut exports of the metals by 70 percent, disrupting manufacturing in Japan, Europe and the U.S., and sending the prices of these metals up 40 percent.
China currently controls production but the country only has 37 percent of Read more…
WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia is quickly running out of oil
US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world’s biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%
The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.
The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.
The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to Read more…
Texas Second Day of Power Outages May Be Avoided
A second day of controlled power outages by some utilities might not be needed in Texas in response to huge electric demand following a winter storm.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas early Thursday said “immediate concerns for the possibility of rotating outages this morning are reduced.” But ERCOT said the agency would continue to monitor the state’s electric grid for additional unexpected losses of generation, a day after the problem led to mandated outages across the ERCOT system.
Wednesday night, ERCOT said in a statement that electricity demand hit record highs and to be aware of the possibility of more rolling outages. See their original statement below.
Residents and businesses across Texas and in Brown County experienced rolling blackouts Wednesday due to the bitterly cold weather, and those blackouts could continue into Read more…
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.