Biobutanol: Latest biofuel aspirant

Biobutanol, a new, promising biofuel has no blend limit when mixed with gasoline,can be put into pipelines as they are, and can be made from multiple fuelstocks.

The question, as always is, can refining it be done on a commercial scale?

Exodus. Nike resigns from Chamber of Commerce too

Nike becomes the fourth major company to resign from the Chamber of Commerce‘s due to their climate change denial. The first three are utilities, PG&E, Exelon, and NME. They could have financial motives for doing so even as they also have made major moves towards renewable energy.

However, Nike has no financial motive here. They [...]

More pain for humiliated SEC after disclosure it ignored Moody’s whistleblower warnings

As if the SEC could be humiliated any more, another piece of disclosure now highlights that Mary Schapiro’s useless organization was unresponsive to whistleblower overtures by former Moody’s employees attempting to warn the regulator “about Moody’s weak compliance department and ratings process.”

Every person at SEC who ignored whistleblowers or blocked an investigation should have [...]

As subprime lending crisis unfolded, watchdog Fed didn’t bother barking

The Federal Reserve in their customary pose protecting the public

So says WaPo, citing community organizations who as early as 1999 begged the Fed to act against subprime, to no avail. But Alan Greenspan, an extreme right wing Ayn Rand disciple, was in charge of the Fed then. He just loved subprime, and creating [...]

Nation’s largest utility leaves US Chamber of Commerce because of their climate change denial

Exelon joins PG&E and NME in leaving the Chamber of Commerce over that organization’s recent complete denial that climate change is happening.

Leadership of the Chamber of Commerce appears to have been jacked by extremists who increasingly do not have support from their own members. They are now backpedaling furiously, pretending to be moderates.

[...]

Desperate Britons selling their own kidneys to pay debts

Daily Mail UK

Some in Britain are trying to sell their own kidneys, charging £60,000 plus expenses, in crazed attempts to get out of debt. Even if they could go to jail for it.

Bizarrely, one man advertised his kidney for sale in order to pay mortgage and credit card bills – and remodel [...]

Artist portrays what he really thinks about Madoff

The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. A bull, meant to represent Wall Street, is seen ramming the biggest con man of all time, Bernie Madoff, into a wall. Totally deserving, if you ask me.

The huge cloud coming out of the [...]

BioFuelBox opens its first fat-to-fuel plant

Their new refinery converts grease, fat, and oil into biodiesel. What’s more, the process is cost-effective with petroleum diesel and only takes fifteen minutes.

America’s love affair with capitalism a fatal attraction?

Byron DeLear, who I knew when we both lived in LA and he ran for a House seat as a Green, just kicked off his debut in Examiner with a column on Michael Moore’s new movie.

The failures of the S&L crisis, Enron, subprime mortgages, Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, reveal a deeper social pathology; [...]

MSM discovers blogs break stories before they do, determines problem must be blogs are icky.

Mainstream media realizes they may need to rethink their strategies

Mainstream media is all, ah, atwitter about major stories that have recently been broken by blogs, as well as all that information flowing freely through social networking sites. Apparently these new media upstarts are not being properly respectful of the dinosaurs of journalism, who [...]