1.2 billion people are now considered to be urgently hungry, which is the highest number ever recorded. The world’s cattle consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. There are currently 6.7 billion people on the planet earth.

It takes 16 pounds of grain and 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In the United States alone we feed farm factory animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats, enough to feed more than 5 times the country’s population.

via Simple Math Points to Global Solution | Change Your Diet, Change Your World .

Thorium is an inexpensive and readily available element that can be used to create nuclear reactions with no risk of a melt down, improved efficiency with fewer dangerous byproducts than uranium, and no dangerous byproducts that can be used to create weapons.  In short, Thorium powered energy is real and can do what the “clean coal” movement dreams of doing.  

China and India already are making investments in Thorium reactors, but America has thus far lagged far behind spending just $250 million to begin to develop this.  The Wired Magazine Article Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke gives an excellent overview of this exciting development.

Is Thorium the answer to safe energy independence in America?  I certainly hope our country will invest more money to develop this energy source.

Saw a message on the ticker of a local news show suggesting that viewers send a text message to donate $10 for the relief in Haiti. Later that I day I learned that the phone company takes a cut of that and it can take 3 weeks for your money to get to the charity. They suggested you are better off going directly to the web sites of trustworthy charitable groups to make donations.

Today Google threatened to pull out of China after suffering from repeated attacks that originated in China.  It seems that Chinese hackers have been trying to hack the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.   Google is contemplating closing the doors on its China based operations altogether.   It appears the attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese government.

“I think that with the increasing demands that were being placed on Google vis-à-vis censorship combined with these very troubling cyberattacks, Google reached a tipping point,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “It is a principled decision.”

After 2 weeks of deal making, yesterday at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagan, the major nations of the world delivered a 12 paragraph accord with specific targets for reducing climate change.

The deal worked out in Copenhagen was forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies.  However critics say that even if the greenhouse emission targets were reached that they are woefully inadequate to significantly reduce climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps.

While the accord that was reached may not be enforceable, it is a step in the right direction. More meaningful talks will need to take place between the 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. Perhaps a smaller group of countries can achieve more with more focused direction.

President Obama has reenergized the US position on the global warming just in time for the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference this week.  President Obama said it would be a legally binding climate treaty calling for an ambitious reduction in carbon dioxide–83 percent by 2050. 

President Obama and a large delegation of political leaders from the US will be attending the conference personally.   Keep your fingers crossed that the US, China and India all manage to do the right thing

I read a troubling article in the New York Times that said that hunger in America is at a 14 year high.   There were 49 million Americans that did not have consistent access to food in the last year and the increase correlates with the high unemployment rate.

It seems to me that we as a nation need to consider the money wasted on the failed CIT Group bail out and how many meals that could have bought for hungry Americans.

Another thought.  Isn’t it odd that we have an epidemic of obesity while so many are going hungry?   That just isn’t right.

Solar power combined with smart grid, energy efficiency and energy storage technologies can provide a viable substitute for a large coal plant that provides power around the clock – and at a lower cost. 

Jigar Shah, of the non-profit group, Carbon War Room, said, “All of the four technologies can be employed in small bits and chunks, it can be done on a scalable basis to meet exactly the need but not more than we need,”

Solar and wind power technologies have high up front costs, but have low operational costs because the sun and wind are free. However, “we insist on continuing to invest in technologies that are exactly the opposite — high capital costs, subject to volatile fuel prices,” Mr. Shah said.

Leave it to Hollywood to make something horrible out of something entirely innocent.   While our planet faces very real threats from global warming, mis-management of farming land, mis-allocation of food resources and war, Hollywood has been hyping an apocalyptic nightmare to take place in December of 2012. 

While we mankind faces some real threats, 2012 is not one of them.  Here is an article from the Denver Post, with specific details about 2012 and how Western countries projected the idea of an apocolyptic event onto Dec. 21, 2012, which really just marks an Mayan anniversary of creation. 

Next apocalypse? Mayan year 2012 stirs doomsayers

By Mark Stevenson
The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly “running out” on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it’s not the end of the world.

Or is it? Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff.” It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood’s “2012″ opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” Web site, says people are scared.

“It’s too bad that we’re getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they’re too young to die,” Martin said. “We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn’t live to see them grow up.” Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes “predictions” from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: “Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?” It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or “Planet X.” But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn’t survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It’s unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, “He will descend from the sky.” Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.

“If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.” The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D.

to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

“It’s a special anniversary of creation,” said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin.

“The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they’re just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six.” Bernal suggests that apocalypse is “a very Western, Christian” concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are “exhausted.” If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth’s axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year.

Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun’s lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.

Another spooky coincidence? “The question I would ask these guys is, so what?” says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the “Bad Astronomy” blog. He says the alignment doesn’t fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

“They’re really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012,” Plait said.

But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

“If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal,” said Jenkins.

As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the “fateful” date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America’s power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there’s evidence the 2012 peak could be “a lulu.” While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to “use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don’t let the credit cards go up.” Another History Channel program titled “Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days” says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a “pole shift.” “The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster,” a narrator proclaims.

“Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe.” The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.

Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

“No one who’s writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn’t,” says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around.”

Source: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13533781

After reading this, perhaps the “History Channel” should stick to history.

What state is the 2nd greenest state in the United States?  New Jersey!  Long the butt of environmental jokes about pollution, the garden state can take pride that they have outshined others in solar power generation.  This is all the more impressive when you consider that New Jersey is not a state generally noted for having lots of sunny days.  

Trailing only California, New Jersey impresses with its innovation and creativity.  By putting solar panels on the flat roofs of its many commercial buildings and on top of its utility poles they are generating more solar power than most of the so called “sunshine” states.

According to the article, since the solar panels are literally sitting right on top of customers, there is no need for major new transmission lines.

New Jersey’s goal is to get 3% of its electricity from the sun and 12% from offshore wind by 2020, part of a larger effort to meet 30% of the state’s electricity needs through clean sources.

“We don’t have the land to do big, grid-connected, utility-scale solar projects, so we’ve had to think more creatively,” said Ralph Izzo, chief executive of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. The big utility received regulatory approval this week to install 40 megawatts of solar panels on utility poles and another 40 megawatts at its industrial yards and on rooftops.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, The Garden State’s generous financial incentives for solar installation are helping to generate interest. “I’ve had plenty of people ask me, ‘Why New Jersey? Why not Arizona?’ ” said Paul Vicarro, a facilities managing director at FedEx. “The answer is: That is where the money is, that is where incentives are to make the deal financially viable.”