The energy boom is upending a lot of old assumptions about the viability of U.S. manufacturing, and it’s as key to American success as the invention of the Internet, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told CNBC on Wednesday.
“Cheap energy—the revolution that’s going on in America’s heartland on energy—is making sure that America now has a manufacturing renaissance,” the former Obama White House chief of staff said in a “Squawk Box” interview.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/
China cloning on ‘industrial scale’ — “…. anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it – it’s like digitalising all the wonderful species.” (Wang Jun, BGI’s chief executive)
BBC News, excerpts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
Suntory said on Monday it plans to buy Beam for $16 billion, including debt, making the Japanese company the world’s third-largest maker of liquor. Beam’s brands include Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Sauza, Canadian Club and Courvoisier.
http://www.nbcnews.com/
Nearly half of Africa’s wild lions are facing extinction in 20 to 40 years unless urgent conservation measures are put in place, a report suggests. Writing in the journal Ecology Letters, conservationists have said that the big cats should be better protected from their main threat – humans.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
[Rolf] Peterson studies large carnivores, and is among the world’s top wolf experts. He and scientists like him are finding that as the number of big predators dwindles, everything around the animals changes. It’s like a “cascade” down the food chain. Ecologists call it a trophic cascade — trophic being a term to define any particular level in nature’s food chain.
“You know, we have trashed the large carnivores for sure,” he says. “They are becoming more and more scarce, and we don’t even have the science to tell us what we’re losing.” NPR, excerpts
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/10/
For the first time ever annual global auto sales have topped 80 million vehicles, according to consulting firm IHS Automotive. The firm tallied year-end sales numbers from around the world and came up with a total of 82.84 million vehicles, a 4.2% increase compared to 2012.
The sales pace means 2.6 new vehicles were sold every second last year.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/
In more than half of European countries, there are not enough honeybees to pollinate crops, according to new research.
Scientists believe that a boom in biofuels has sparked a massive increase in the need for pollination. The shortage is particularly acute in Britain which has only a quarter of the honeybees required. They researchers believe that wild pollinators including bumblebees and hoverflies are making up the shortfall.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
The energy industry plans to pour more money into America’s natural gas infrastructure over the next 12 years—a lot more.
Annual spending on infrastructure dedicated to the gathering, storage and pipeline shipping of natgas in the United States will continue to rise, hitting a staggering $34.5 billion in the year 2022, according to information released Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute. That’s up from an estimated $18.9 billion this year.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/
LAKE MEAD, Nev. — The sinuous Colorado River and its slew of man-made reservoirs from the Rockies to southern Arizona are being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years. The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white mineral deposits where water once lapped. Seeking to stretch their allotments of the river, regional water agencies are recycling sewage effluent, offering rebates to tear up grass lawns and subsidizing less thirsty appliances from dishwashers to shower heads.
But many experts believe the current drought is only the harbinger of a new, drier era in which the Colorado’s flow will be substantially and permanently diminished. New York Times
People are getting fatter around the world. And the problem is growing most rapidly in developing countries, researchers reported Friday. “Over the last 30 years, the number of people who are overweight and obese in the developing world has tripled,” says Steve Wiggins, of the Overseas Development Institute in London.
One-third of adults globally are now overweight compared with fewer than 23 percent in 1980, the report found. And the number of overweight and obese people in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich countries.
As Homo erectus asphaltus moves ever closer to being a totally sustainable species, we’ll be needing new and innovative additions to our colorful wardrobes. And the Fashion Winner of the Weak is:
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