We are entering the third great carbon era

From Alternet:

Many other experts share this view, assuring us that increased reliance on “clean” natural gas combined with expanded investments in wind and solar power will permit a smooth transition to a green energy future in which humanity will no longer be pouring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All this sounds promising indeed. There is only one fly in the ointment: it is not, in fact, the path we are presently headed down. The energy industry is not investing in any significant way in renewables. Instead, it is pouring its historic profits into new fossil-fuel projects, mainly involving the exploitation of what are called “unconventional” oil and gas reserves. The result is indisputable: humanity is not entering a period that will be dominated by renewables. Instead, it is pioneering the third great carbon era, the Age of Unconventional Oil and Gas. . . . Hydro-fracking -- the use of high-pressure water columns to shatter underground shale formations and liberate the oil and natural gas supplies trapped within them -- is being undertaken in ever more regions of the United States and in a growing number of foreign countries. In the meantime, the exploitation of carbon-dirty heavy oil and tar sands formations is accelerating in Canada, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

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FOX news tells yet another climate change lie

From Rocky Mountain Institute:

According to Fox Business reporter Shibani Joshi, renewables are successful in Germany and not in the U.S. because Germany has “got a lot more sun than we do.” Sure, California might get sun now and then, Joshi conceded during her now-infamous flub, "but here on the East Coast, it's just not going to work." (She recanted the next day while adding new errors.) Actually, Germany gets only about as much annual sun as Seattle or Alaska; its sunniest region gets less sun than almost anywhere in the lower 48 states. This underscores an important point: solar power works and competes not only in the sunniest places, but in some pretty cloudy places, too.
I would have taken 30 seconds for FOX to figure out that Germany gets much less sun than most of the U.S., which leads me to conclude that FOX is intentionally telling a lie to support the fossil fuel industry.

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Stunning Russian color photos from around 1910

A friend shared this link to these Russian color photos from around 1910. Stunning images. Here's the story:

"With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948."  
russian photo St. Louis photographer Ed Crim adds this information: "The camera was situated on a very sturdy tripod, the image format was large (roughly 2.75 x3.5 inches) and the emulsions dense with silver. With precise registration of the images and cooperative subjects, it wouldn't be too hard to get sharp images."

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NSA appears to be planting spyware

Fascinating article at Slate makes the argument that the NSA is planting spyware in order to ship private information to one of its contractors. I wasn't sold in the first few sentences, but then the article kept disclosing more and more evidence.

Intriguingly, the malware that had apparently been placed on some of the Freedom Hosting websites Sunday may have turned up evidence showing how the feds are attempting to infiltrate Tor networks in order to track down suspects. According to an analysis by security researcher Vlad Tsrklevic, the malware in question collects identifying information about the person visiting the page and sends it back to an IP address near Reston, Va. Because the malware does not infiltrate the computer like criminal malware and instead merely collects identifying information, according to Tsrklevich, “it’s very likely that this is being operated by a law enforcement agency.”

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