Archive for the 'Energy' Category

METAL MAPS

Published by Yuletide on April 19, 2007 in Energy, Environment, Geography and Metal. 0 Comments

I’m working on a mapping project for a cartography class. To map METAL around the world, and investigate its distribution. I’ve already compiled a list of all the countries which have bands listed on http://metal-archives.com (my main source of primary data thus far) and calculated a preliminary METAL RATIO, which is basically population divided by # of metal bands. While far from perfect, it certainly gets things to within an order of magnitude. Also, its clearly skewed by reporting error (internet connectivity is quite high in scandinavia, for instance). But still, the data remains useful.

I’m also putting out a request for anyone who has data I could use in this project. I’ve tried contacting the people at metal-archives.com to no avail, so I just scraped the data by hand. Ideally I’d like an excel spreadsheet (or at least an sql dump) of any kind of relevant music data with geographic relationships (music industry data, album sales, all that is good too). Also interesting would be user demographics for the popular metal forums and sites, though so far the responses have been so lacking on the forums I’ve tried I’m not hopeful anything will come up (at least for now, maybe things will change once I start posting the maps themselves).

random aside:

[posted with ecto]

OH, and as if we didn’t need more reasons to love Norway:
From USA Today: Norway aims to be carbon neutral by 2050

OSLO, April 19 — Norway wants to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 in the world’s toughest national plan for fighting global warming, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.
He said that Norway, the world’s number five oil exporter, wanted other rich nations to set similar “carbon neutral” aims.
“Norway would be the first country in the world to take on such a concrete commitment,” Stoltenberg said in a proposal to his Labour Party that was met by a standing ovation.

I should add some extra bonus points to Norway’s Metal Ratio, no?

Granted, they’re just buying a crapload of carbon credits using money they earned exporting oil and gas… but it’s a start, right?

F’ers in the News

Published by Yuletide on December 13, 2006 in Energy, Environment, FUCKERS!, Issues, News, Politics and Quotes. 0 Comments

Nabil Soleiman, an adviser to the ministry of religious affairs in Syria, said, “If the Holocaust ever occurred, it was a conspiracy against the Arab-Islamic world as today the Middle East is still paying the consequences.

Oh, ok. That makes sense. OH WAIT.

The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp could be about 2,007,” [Australian Frederick] Toben said. ”The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236014,00.html

___

“Eventually, even the peddlars of climate alarmism will have to concede that the hoopla over manmade catastrophic global warming and the proposed solutions like the costly and ineffective Kyoto Protocol, will prove to be one of the history’s most misguided concerns– joining the 1970’s coming ice age fears, overpopulation and famines scares — to name just a few.”
–Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee
http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?id=266803&party=rep

Wow. And this guy is actually an elected member of our Congress. WOW.
Fucking assholes.

OH, and the best part? The article that he’s commenting on, is (according to the title referenced by his press release) about how the impact of COWS is worse than CARS! So, like, the cows are doing it then… Without ANY help from us… who–oh yeah–BREED THEM.

Of course, I’m sure he has nothing to say about the fucking POLAR BEARS (Note: link from the WSJ, no less)

Inspired by this note from the kind folks over at SNG:

Looks like we have a few skeptics on our hands: SENATOR INHOFE ANNOUNCES PUBLIC RELEASE OF “SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO DEBUNKING GLOBAL WARMING”

Oklahoma senator James Inhofe is Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee–he just published a booklet called “Hot and Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming.” It’s in color and substantiated with lots of pretty charts and graphics and quotes from real, live scientists! Almost as good a read as State of Fear!

Get it while it’s hot: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=266711

Hybrid Car Owners Create Washington Political Lobby

Published by Yuletide on August 20, 2006 in Energy and Politics. 0 Comments

Organization will push for the existing and new incentives for users of alternative fuel cars. Hybrid vehicle owners have it pretty good: tax credits, unlimited access to car pool lanes and free parking in some places. Now they’ll have their own lobbying group in Washington.
->FINALLY!

read more | digg story

Drain America First - New York Times

Published by Yuletide on July 25, 2006 in Energy, Politics and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Drain America First - New York Times

This is mind-boggling. The bill’s stated purpose is to reduce fuel prices. But while the gulf may hold enough natural gas to affect the price of that commodity, the same cannot be said of oil. No matter where it looks, a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil supply while holding only 3 percent of the reserves will never be able to drill its way to lower oil prices, much less oil independence.

THANK you. My Dad has been saying this for like, a million years. Yeesh.

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