We should be getting about a foot of snow Monday. We went to the supermarket tonight to stock up and found more than a few empty shelves. Lots of folks beat us to it!

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Bush urges Arab allies to confront Iran

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The British government has invited companies to construct new nuclear power stations to meet its climate-change goals and will not set a limit on how many are built.

The move is expected to add momentum to a worldwide revival in nuclear energy.

France currently gets most of its electricity from nuclear. They’ve never had even the remotest problem with it. As Jim Kunstler says, nukes may be the best way to keep the lights on until we figure out what power source comes after it. Renewable power isn’t yet at the point where it can deliver huge amounts of cheap energy. Let’s work towards making that happen. But in the meantime, India and China will either build hundreds of carbon dioxide spewing coal plants - or they maybe they could build a few nukes instead.

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 Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA in 1970/1, Indonesia in 1997, Australia in 2000, the North Sea in 2001, and Mexico in 2004.

This from Commodity Online, who have an excllent primer on Peak Oil. There is now consensus in the oil industry that peak oil is real and we are somewhere around the peak now. Thus, oil will increasingly be harder to get at and consequently more expensive. That’s just the supply side. On the demand side, India and China are modernizing quickly and need increasing amounts of oil.

So, we need a worldwide effort into providing cheap, clean transportation. Hybrids would certainly be one way. If tens of millions of autos were getting 40-50 mpg rather than 20, demand for oil would drop substantially. Ditto for implementing mass transit as much as possible.

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Just switched to Feedburner for the default rss feed. So, if you’re using the old one (which will always be here and works fine) you might want to switch to the Feedburner feed, which adds functionality for you and allows me to tracks things better.

If you don’t  already use an rss reader, check it out! Rather than going multiple sites and blogs a day to see what’s new, just subscribe to their rss feed and read everything in one place, and it’s always updated.

I use the online Google Reader. Newsgator has desktop and online versions that are now free, and there are many more readers to choose from.

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Hard drug abuse is becoming a major problem among coal miners in West Virginia. The work is dangerous, many got addicted after suffering a serious injury on the job which led to pain killer prescriptions from MD’s. Then, when that wasn’t enough, the street offered more.

Some drive 100 miles each day to a methadone clinic. But it’s for-profit, which makes some uneasy.

Several Tazewell officials want to shut the center down or force it to move, seeing its for-profit business model and treatment mission as a conflict of interest. According to the clinic’s policy, patients can buy methadone as long as they want; detoxification is voluntary.

Does the clinic offer any services to help addicts get clean? If not, then charging $12.50 a day for methadone would seem conflicted indeed. Support groups, counseling, medical care, and detox facilities need to be available. Substituting one addictive drug from another is not a long-term solution.

The clinic’s counseling staff members say that many patients need to be on some sort of drug to cope with severe, long-term pain and that methadone has made them functional. And for those who lack insurance or access to more personalized care, it is often the only affordable option.

This is the crux of the matter. Poor working class whites in rural West Virginia don’t get the help that those better-off in larger cities do because such assistance is not available. It needs to be.

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