Sriracha hot sauce production declared public nuisance by California city

Rory Carroll in Los Angeles theguardian.com, Thursday 10 April 2014 07.34 EDT


Sriracha chili sauce bottles are produced at the Huy Fong Foods factory in Irwindale, California. Photograph: Nick Ut/AP

The hot sauce apocalypse looms again. Officials in California have declared the production of sriracha, the wildly popular chili sauce, a public nuisance because of the smell.

Irwindale's city council voted unanimously on Wednesday night to give the manufacturer an ultimatum to reduce the odour itself or have officials march in and do it themselves.

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The council determined that the spicy odour had caused a problem for residents in the industrial town east of Los Angeles. Some have complained of headaches and sore throats and demanded the plant's closure. Air quality officials said they had received 69 complaints in recent months.

The company's attorney promised that Huy Fong Foods would have an action plan within 10 days and a system to control the smell operational by June, when it traditionally starts grinding chili peppers....

Climate change is good for you, says ultra-conservative Heartland Institute
New study by thinktank funded by Koch brothers aims to debunk authoritative UN climate change report

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 April 2014 15.51 EDT


Try thinking of yourself as a pea, instead of a human, the Heartland Institute suggests. Photograph: Alamy

For those concerned about climate change, the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute offers up a calming solution: try thinking of yourself as a pea, instead of a human. Peas in a lab sprouted faster with extreme concentrations of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas mainly responsible for climate change than under normal growing conditions, Heartland said.

“Which pea shoot would you rather be,” asked Craig Idso, the lead author of a new Heartland publication meant to debunk the authoritative new climate change report released by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

What's good for a pea pod isn't necessarily good for the planet, of course. Idso did not mention how rising temperatures and growing water scarcity might affect plant growth under climate change. It was just one of many lapses by what claimed to be a serious scientific examination of the threat of climate change from the thinktank funded by the Koch oil billionaires and anonymous donors.

The Heartland Institute has over the years published its own parallel-universe version of the blockbuster climate reports...

For the Heartland report, only a handful of reporters turned out, and Heartland complained its offerings were almost never noticed by the scientific press. The event broke up ahead of schedule because Heartland said members had to go meet members of Congress – whose identities the group refused to disclose.

A New Pit Bull Study
March 15, 2012

The author’s study shows pit bulls’ natural habitat is the bed and breed-specific behavior is cuddling

By Anna MacNeill

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At my university, I visited campus libraries expecting to delve into a pool of pit bull literature. Instead, I found myself ankle deep in a mud puddle. There was nothing substantial!

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What the Study Revealed

A new profile of pit bulls emerged from the study: They were not more aggressive than the other breeds. Pit bulls were more likely to sleep on the bed [62% vs. 16%, p<0.05], more likely to cuddle with their owners (p<0.05), and less likely to show aggression to their owners (p<0.10) – three things associated with strong human-animal bonds. Pit bulls were more likely to pull on the leash (p<0.05).

There was no difference in the number of dogs euthanized at the shelter due to aggression. Likewise, there was no significant difference between groups for aggression to strangers, other dogs, cats, children under 12, skateboarders/cyclists, joggers, over food, when stepped over, or when moved while sleeping.

There was, however, a trend for the other breeds group to be returned for aggression (p<0.02). For those still in the home, there was a slight trend for the other breeds group to show aggression to their guardians (p<0.10).

Seven bites were inflicted on people: one by a pit bull, which did not break the skin, and six by the other breed group, four breaking the skin.

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Lloyd’s Report Highlights Solar Storm Threat as Emerging Risk
May 23, 2013


“A large solar storm could leave tens of millions of people in North America without electrical power for several months, if not years, potentially costing trillions of dollars,” according to Lloyd’s latest emerging risks report: “Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid.”

The report, which is being launched at the Electric Infrastructure Security Summit in London, was produced in co-operation with U.S.-based Atmospheric Environmental Research. It notes that while large geomagnetic storms are relatively rare, they “can create a massive surge of current, potentially overloading the electric grid system and damaging expensive, and critical, transformers.”

According to the report, a large solar storm in 1989 triggered the collapse of Quebec’s electrical power grid, leaving six million Canadians without power for nine hours. A smaller storm in 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden as well as damage to transformers in South Africa (transformers at that latitude were previously thought to be immune from such damage).

...The report describes the Carrington Event of 1859, which is widely regarded as the most extreme space weather event on record. Such an event today would affect between 20-40 million people in the U.S. with power cuts lasting from several weeks to one to two years. The economic costs would be “catastrophic,” according to Lloyd’s – estimated at between $0.6 and $2.6 trillion.

Fortunately, Lloyd’s says, a Carrington-level extreme geomagnetic storm is rare ...

Technology Emerging in 2014 with Potential to Reshape the Energy Space
Posted March 14, 2014
Roman Kilisek

Technology is the main driver for change – i.e. optimization, which leads to finding promising technological solutions for pressing global challenges – and for increased productivity in the modern world. However, for mankind to continue along this trajectory, appropriate investment is often dependent on the public’s understanding and awareness of promising technologies’ potential, as well as their application. In order to put promising technological breakthroughs on the public’s radar the World Economic Forum publishes a list of Top 10 Emerging Technologies annually. Among the key trends in technological change identified in the latest World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies report are also technological breakthroughs relevant in the energy realm such as grid-scale electricity storage and nanowire lithium-ion batteries.

In general, modern electric power companies face the challenge to integrate intermittent renewable power sources such as the sun and wind into an existing power grid originally designed for base load fossil-fuel power sources and nuclear. Every time a vast supply of electricity is produced – during peak sun hours – and is met with comparatively little demand to consume this sudden spike in electricity supply, power suppliers not only face the problem of finding buyers for this excess electricity but, most importantly, this also elevates the risk of overwhelming a power grid designed on the traditional premise of predictable and flexible base load fossil-fuel power generation. So, any renewable energy integration into the traditional grid complicates supply and demand balances and constitutes transformation towards a more decentralized power generation system. Picture the spread out individual solar PV-based electricity “producers” – often called distributed generation – feeding their excess power into the grid while simultaneously relying on the grid during times of insufficient solar electricity generation.


Source: Wholesale Solar

The following chart illustrates the above situation; namely, that “Integration means Transformation”. This is one of the main findings in the IEA’s new report titled “The Power of Transformation – Wind, Sun and the Economics of Flexible Power Systems” published in February 2014.


Source: IEA

Instead of viewing renewables as forced into the remaining system without adaptation, the entire electricity system should be perceived as being re-optimized. This is where promising grid-scale electricity storage technology comes into play.

The World Economic Forum describes the technology and its intellectual premise as follows:

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Renewable energy will not solve climate change
Renewable energy and energy efficiency are not the solutions to climate change. Instead we need to more closely examine carbon capture and storage.

DAVID HONE ABC Environment 10 MAR 2014

WHETHER AT UNITED NATIONS climate change summits or one of the many 'green growth' forums, renewables and energy efficiency are consistently regarded as the solution to global warming. Even the coal industry adopted the efficiency line in its Warsaw Communiqué (pdf), released ahead of the UN's climate change summit last November.

But a closer look at the global energy system, together with a more refined understanding of the emissions challenge, reveals that fossil fuels will likely remain dominant throughout this century — meaning that carbon capture and storage (CCS) may well be the critical technology for mitigating climate change.

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"Energy efficiency may drive, not limit, the increase in emissions"

Thermal Energy Storage, Demand Response Is Put To The Test In Connecticut
by Renew Grid on March 12, 2014

Ice Energy, a provider of distributed thermal energy storage and smart grid solutions, has installed two Ice Bear energy storage systems for Connecticut-based utility United Illuminating Co. (UI) as a pilot project through the Energize Connecticut initiative, which is dedicated to helping citizens of the state make smart energy choices.

According to Ice Energy, the Ice Bears were installed at two commercial businesses located in Orange, Conn. The company says each unit was configured to provide both thermal energy storage and demand response.

At each site, Ice Energy reports that some of the air-conditioning load is permanently shifted from peak to off peak using thermal energy storage, and some of the load is subject to curtailment in an emergency using demand response. The pilot will go through this coming summer.

The company adds that the monitoring and evaluation of the performance of these units is being done in partnership with the University of New Haven's Tagliatela College of Engineering. Ravi Gorthala, a professor of mechanical engineering, and Amy Thompson, a professor of system and industrial engineering, will be providing critical data to determine the impact on the grid and these businesses.

"This pilot study and its results will provide good indicators of the capability of the Ice Bear technology ...