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National Geographic Magazine Early on a clear November morning in the Mojave Desert, the sun is barely touching the peaks of the McCullough Range with a cool pink glow. Behind them, a full moon is sinking over the gigawatt glare of Las Vegas. Nevada Solar One is sleeping. But the day's work is about to begin. It is hard to imagine that a power plant could be so beautiful: 250 acres of gently curved mirrors lined up in long troughs like canals of light. Parked facing the ground overnight, they are starting to awaken more than 182,000 of them and follow the sun. "Looks like this will be a 700 degree day," says one of the operators in the control room. His job is to monitor the rows of parabolically shaped mirrors as they concentrate sunlight on long steel pipes filled with circulating oil,fitflops clearance, heating it as high as 750 degrees Fahrenheit. From the mirror field, the blistering liquid pours into giant radiators that extract the heat and boil water into steam. The steam drives a turbine and dynamo,birkenstock yara sandal, pushing as much as 64 megawatts onto the grid enough to electrify 14,000 households or a few Las Vegas casinos. "Once the system makes steam, it's very traditional industry standard stuff," says plant manager Robert Cable, pointing toward a gas fired power plant on the other side of Eldorado Valley Drive. "We get the same tools and the same parts as the place across the street." When Nevada Solar One came on line in 2007, it was the first large solar plant to be built in the United States in more than 17 years. During that time, solar technology blossomed elsewhere. Nevada Solar One belongs to Acciona, a Spanish company that generates electricity here and sells it to NV Energy, the regional utility. The mirrors were made in Germany. Putting on hard hats and dark glasses, Cable and I get into his pickup and drive slowly past row after row of mirrors. Men with a water truck are hosing down some. "Any kind of dust affects them," Cable says. At the far edge of the mirror field, we stop and step out of the truck for a closer look. To show how sturdy the glass is, Cable bangs it like a drum. Above his head, at the focal point of the parabola, the pipe carrying the oil is coated with black ceramic to soak up the light, and it's encased in an airless glass cylinder for insulation. On a clear summer day with the sun directly overhead, Nevada Solar One can convert about 21 percent of the sun's rays into electricity. Gas plants are more efficient, but this fuel is free. And it doesn't emit planet warming carbon dioxide. About every 30 seconds there is a soft buzz as a motor moves the mirrors a little higher; by midday they will be looking straight up. It's so quiet out here one can hardly fathom how much work is being done: Each of the 760 arrays of mirrors can produce about 84,000 watts almost 113 horsepower. the oil coursing through the pipes has reached operating temperature. A white plume is spewing from a cooling stack. Half an hour later, the sound of the turbine inside the generating station has reached a high pitched scream. Nevada Solar One is ready to go on line. With a new administration in Washington promising to take on global warming and loosen the grip of foreign oil, solar energy finally may be coming of age. Last year oil prices spiked to more than $140 a barrel before plunging along with the economy a reminder of the dangers of tying the future to something as unpredictable as oil. Washington, confronting the worst recession since the 1930s, is underwriting massive projects to overhaul the country's infrastructure, including its energy supply. In his inaugural address President Barack Obama promised to "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." His 2010 budget called for doubling the country's renewable energy capacity in three years. Wind turbines and biofuels will be important contributors. But no form of energy is more abundant than the sun. "If we talk about geothermal or wind, all these other sources of renewable energy are limited in their quantity," Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany, told me last fall. "The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited." There are two main ways to harness it. The first is to produce steam, either with parabolic troughs like the ones in Nevada or with a field of flat, computer guided mirrors, called heliostats, that focus sunlight on a receiver on top of an enormous "power tower." The second way is to convert sunlight directly into electricity with photovoltaic (PV) panels made of semiconductors such as silicon. Each approach has its advantages. Right now steam generation, also known as concentrating solar or solar thermal, is more efficient than photovoltaic a greater percentage of incoming sunlight is converted into electricity. But it requires acres of land and long transmission lines to bring the power to market. Photovoltaic panels can be placed on rooftops at the point where the power is needed. Both energy sources share an obvious drawback: They fade when it's cloudy and disappear at night. But engineers are already developing systems for storing the energy for use in the darker hours. The optimists say that with steady, incremental improvements no huge breakthroughs are required and with substantial government support, solar power could become as economical and efficient as fossil fuels. The pessimists say they've heard all this before 30 years ago,birkenstock usa, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. That too was a period of national crisis, triggered by the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Addressing the nation in his cardigan sweater, President Carter called for a new national energy policy with solar energy playing a large part. In 1979 the Islamic revolution in Iran sent oil prices soaring again. American drivers lined up for gasoline, their radios blaring songs like "Bomb Iran," by Vince Vance and the Valiants (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann"). Carter, true to his word, put solar water heaters on the White House roof. During the next few years, two large fields of parabolic troughs, SEGS I and II (for Solar Electric Generating Station) were installed about 160 miles southwest of Las Vegas, near Daggett, California. They were followed by seven more plants nearby, at Kramer Junction and beside waterless Harper Lake. The plants are still operating about a million mirrors in all on some 1,600 acres with a combined power of 354 megawatts. From afar they look like mirages. The momentum didn't last. As the economy adjusted to the Iranian oil shock, fuel prices fell. With the sense of urgency reduced, along with the research dollars, solar remained a minor factor in the energy equation. The SEGS plants were still being built when President Ronald Reagan took the solar water heaters off the White House roof. The first solar revolution fizzled. Two decades later, a new solar revolution may be ready to begin. Another legacy of the Carter era, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado the government's primary research center for solar, wind, hydrogen, and other alternative fuels is bracing for a resurgence. When I visited last fall, a new research campus and headquarters were under construction against the side of a mountain outside Golden. Five acres of photovoltaic panels on top of the mesa will feed the labs and offices below. That may be just the beginning. Once treated by the government as something of a stepchild, NREL is benefiting from the extra money the Obama Administration is devoting to renewable energy. electricity production that it's measured in tenths of a percent," said Robert Hawsey, an associate director of the lab. "But that's expected to grow. Ten to 20 percent of the nation's peak electricity demand could be provided by solar energy by 2030." But not without government help. Nevada Solar One would never have been built if the state had not set a deadline requiring utilities to generate 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2015. (More than two dozen states now have "renewable portfolio standards," and earlier this year Congress was debating a federal one.) During peak demand a hot afternoon in Las Vegas, when production costs are highest the solar plant's electricity is almost as cheap as that of its gas fired neighbor. But that's only because a 30 percent federal tax credit helped offset its construction costs.  Aiming to bring down costs and reduce the need for incentives, NREL's engineers are studying mirrors made from lightweight polymers instead of glass and receiving tubes that will absorb more sunlight and lose less heat. They're also working on solar power's biggest problem: how to store some of the heat produced during daylight hours for release later on. "In the Southwest particularly, peak loads are in the daytime, but they don't end when the sun goes down," said Mark Mehos, an NREL program manager. People come home from work, turn on lights and air conditioners. Before long they may be plugging in electric cars. Last year the first commercial solar plant with heat storage opened near Guadix, Spain, east of Granada. During the day, sunlight from a mirror field is used to heat molten salt. In the evening, as the salt cools, it gives back heat to make more steam. In Arizona the Solana Generating Station will also use molten salt for storage. When it goes on line in 2012, three square miles of parabolic troughs will produce 280 megawatts for Phoenix and Tucson. Solana is being built by a Spanish company, Abengoa Solar an indication of just how far, in the development of this technology, the United States has fallen behind. Back in the 1980s, an engineer named Roland Hulstrom calculated that if photovoltaic panels the other big solar technology covered just three tenths of a percent of the United States, a 100 by 100 mile square, they could electrify the entire country. People thought he wanted to pave the Mojave with silicon. "The environmentalists got up in arms and said, You can't just go out and cover a hundred miles square," Hulstrom said recently as he sat in his office at NREL. But that's not what he meant. "You can cover parking lots with photovoltaic. You can put it on house roofs." Twenty years later, PV panels still contribute only a tiny amount to the nation's electricity supply. But on rooftops in California, Nevada, and other states with good sunshine and tax incentives, they're a sight almost as familiar as air conditioners and though not yet as developed as solar thermal, they may have a brighter future. Right now the panels are expensive, and they provide an efficiency of only about 10 to 20 percent, compared with the 24 percent of parabolic troughs. History more than physics is to blame. After the solar bust in the mid 1980s, many of the best engineers migrated to the computing industry, which uses the same raw material silicon and other semiconductors. Following what is called Moore's law, microprocessors doubled in capability every couple of years, while solar languished. Now some of the engineering talent is moving back to solar. Researchers at NREL are exploiting the fact that different semiconductors capture different colors from a beam of sunlight. By layering compounds called gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide and using a lens to concentrate sunlight, they built a PV cell last year that is 40.8 percent efficient (a world record, since broken). But it's far from ready for mass production. "The technology is incredibly sophisticated," said Ray Stults, an associate director of the laboratory. "We can make it right now for $10,000 per square centimeter, but not many people are going to buy it." Another approach is to trade higher efficiency for lower cost. Though they generate less power per square inch, thin film semiconductors require less raw material, making them a cheaper alternative for large photovoltaic installations. Two American companies, First Solar and Nanosolar, say they can now manufacture thin film solar cells at a cost of around a dollar a watt tantalizingly close to what's needed to compete with fossil fuels. Looking further ahead, engineers at NREL are working on photovoltaic liquids. "The goal there is to make it the cost of a gallon of paint," Stults said. "The efficiencies won't be 40 or 50 percent. They'll be 10 percent. But if it's cheap,birkenstock arizona sale, you can paint your walls, hook it up, and go." Photovoltaic panels aren't limited to individual houses or warehouses. On the northeastern outskirts of Las Vegas, Nellis Air Force Base is supplying an average of 25 percent of its electricity with photovoltaic. On some winter days when there is no need for air conditioning, 100 percent of the base is solar powered. Last fall, as I looked across the field of 72,416 sun tracking panels, the wind blowing between the rows, I could see the appeal: There were no oil pipes, heat exchangers, boilers, dynamos, or cooling towers just solar photons knocking electrons off silicon atoms and generating a current. Constructed in just 26 weeks in 2007 by the SunPower Corporation, the system generates 14.2 megawatts, making it the largest photovoltaic installation in the United States though only about the 25th largest in the world. Nearly all the bigger ones are in Spain, which, like Germany,birkenstock sandals sale, has invested heavily in solar power. None of those plants yet include a storage system. Since photovoltaics produce electricity directly, there is no heat to capture in tanks of molten salt. One option would be to divert some of the photovoltaic current during the day to drive pumps, compressing air into underground caverns. Compressed air has been employed for decades in Germany and Alabama to store the cheaper nighttime output of conventional power plants for use during the daytime peak. At a solar plant the cycle would be reversed: When electricity was needed at night, the pent up energy from the sunlit hours would be released, rushing forth and spinning a turbine. Right now people who live off grid with PV panels on their roofs rely on ordinary batteries to get through the night. In the future they might have solar powered electrolyzers that split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Recombining the gases in a fuel cell would yield electricity again. The idea is old, but last year Daniel Nocera, a chemist at MIT, reported what may be a breakthrough: a new catalyst that makes splitting water much cheaper. At public lectures Nocera likes to hold up a large plastic water bottle. All of a family's nighttime electricity requirements, he says, could be stored in five of these, with enough left over to run the electric car. No one knows in detail the future of solar energy. But there is a gathering sense that it is wide open if we can make the commitment to jump start the technology. "Originally it seemed like a pie in the sky idea," Michelle Price, the energy manager at Nellis, told me last fall when I toured the base's new photovoltaic plant. "It didn't seem possible." Many things seem possible now. On a cold December morning west of Frankfurt, Germany, fog hung frozen in the trees, and clouds blocked the sun. Shivering on a ridge above the town of Morbach, I watched the blades of a 330 foot high wind turbine swoop in and out of the gloom. Down below, a field of photovoltaic panels struggled for light. Who would have thought that Germany would transform itself into the largest producer of photovoltaic power in the world, with a capacity of more than five gigawatts? Chan150629fitflops clearance Chan150629birkenstock kids W Chan150629birkenstock sale a Chan150629birkenstock kids Cl Chan150629birkenstock shoes o Chan150629Birkenstock UK outl Chan150629cheap fitflops uk 

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Nike Faces New Worker Abuse Claims In Indonesia SUKABUMI, Indonesia (AP)   Workers making Converse sneakers in Indonesia say supervisors throw shoes at them, slap them in the face and call them dogs and pigs. Nike, the brand's owner, admits that such abuse has occurred among the contractors that make its hip high tops but says there was little it could do to stop it. Dozens of workers interviewed by The Associated Press and a document released by Nike show that the footwear and athletic apparel giant has far to go to meet the standards it set for itself a decade ago to end its reliance on sweatshop labor. That does not appear to explain abuses that workers allege at the Pou Chen Group factory in Sukabumi, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Jakarta  it didn't start making Converse products until four years after Nike bought Converse. One worker there said she was kicked by a supervisor last year after making a mistake while cutting rubber for soles. "We're powerless," said the woman, who like several others interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. "Our only choice is to stay and suffer,birkenstock usa, or speak out and be fired." The 10,000 mostly female workers at the Taiwanese operated Pou Chen plant make around 50 cents an hour. That's enough, for food and bunkhouse type lodging, but little else. Some workers interviewed by the AP in March and April described being hit or scratched in the arm  one man until he bled. Others said they were fired after filing complaints. "They throw shoes and other things at us" said a 23 year old woman in the embroidery division. "They growl and slap us when they get angry. "It's part of our daily bread."  Mira Agustina, 30, said she was fired in 2009 for taking sick leave, even though she produced a doctor's note.  "It was a horrible job," she said. "Our bosses pointed their feet at us, calling us names like dog, pig or monkey." All are major insults to Muslims. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation.  At the PT Amara Footwear factory located just outside Jakarta,birkenstock gizeh, where another Taiwanese contractor makes Converse shoes, a supervisor ordered six female workers to stand in the blazing sun after they failed to meet their target of completing 60 dozen pairs of shoes on time.  "They were crying and allowed to continue their job only after two hours under the sun," said Ujang Suhendi, 47, a worker at a warehouse in the factory. The women's supervisor received a warning letter for the May incident after complaints from unionized workers. The company's own inquiries also found workers at the two factories were subjected to "serious and egregious" physical and verbal abuse, including the punishment of forcing workers to stand in the sun, said Hannah Jones, a Nike executive who oversees the company's efforts to improve working conditions. "We do see other issues of that similar nature coming up across the supply chain but not on a frequent level," she said. "We see issues of working conditions on a less egregious nature across the board." Nike, which came under heavy criticism a decade ago for its use of foreign sweatshops and child labor, has taken steps since then to improve conditions at its 1,000 overseas factories. But the progress it has made at factories producing gear with its premier "swoosh" logo is not fully reflected in those making Converse products. An internal report Nike released to the AP after it inquired about the abuse show that nearly two thirds of 168 factories making Converse products worldwide fail to meet Nike's own standards for contract manufacturers. Twelve are in the most serious category, indicating problems that could range from illegally long work hours to denying access to Nike inspectors. A Nike spokeswoman said the company was not aware of physical abuse occurring at those factories. Another 97 are in a category defined as making no progress in improving problems ranging from isolated verbal harassment to paying less than minimum wage. A further six factories had not been audited by Nike. Nike blames problems on pre existing licenses to produce Converse goods that it says prevent the parent company from inspecting factories or introducing its own code of conduct. It says the situation is further complicated because the license holders themselves usually farm out the production work to a subcontractor. Most of the agreements have come up for renewal in the past five years. But it is only the past two years that it has made a concerted effort to incorporate Converse factories into the monitoring program that applies to Nike factories. "We have been working every time we can to renew those agreements or change those agreements or to cease those agreements and to ensure that when we do new agreements we get more ability to influence the licensee and their subcontractors much more directly,birkenstock sandals,birkenstock sale,birkenstock shoes,birkenstock outlet,birkenstock sandals sale," Jones said. Some corporate experts question whether the company is doing all it can,fitflops sale uk. "I simply find it impossible that a company of the size and market power of Nike is impotent in persuading a local factory in Indonesia or anywhere else in meeting its code of conduct," said Prakash Sethi,birkenstock sandals sale, a corporate strategy professor at Baruch College at the City University of New York. Critics of outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest cost countries say it keeps prices down but allows apparel, electronics and toy companies to reduce their accountability for the conditions in such factories. Even as concern about sweatshop labor has grown, some contractors have simply moved operations to more remote areas, farther from the prying eyes of international and local watchdogs. Indonesia is Nike's third largest manufacturing base, after China and Vietnam, with 140,000 workers at 14 contract factories. Of those, 17,000 produce its Converse line at four factories. Pou Chen, the largest of the four Converse factories, is located in a hilly city where the minimum wage is well below the national average. Sukabumi can only be reached by car  a five hour journey across bumpy, winding roads. The plant started making Converse products in 2007. The Taiwanese contractor said it fired one supervisor after being told workers had spoken to The AP earlier this year. Others involved in mistreatment, however, have been allowed to keep their jobs, according to Pou Chen. Nike says the factory is developing programs to teach managers cultural sensitivity and leadership skills. It says it also is closely monitoring the PT Amara factory. After years of criticism over its labor practices at factories abroad, Nike in 2005 became the first major apparel company to disclose the names and locations of hundreds of plants that produce its sneakers, clothes and other products. Chan150629womens birkenstock</li> Chan150629birkenstock yara sa</li> Chan150629cheap fitflops uk</li> Chan150629birkenstock sandals</li> Chan150629fitflop uk online</li> Chan150629birkenstock arizona</li> Chan150629birkenstock sale Ho</li> </ul>

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letter to Tila Tequila I confess yes, I watched your MTV show,birkenstock uk sale, Double Shot At Love where you pranced around trying to find your amongst a group of both men and women. In fact,birkenstock shoes, one of my best dates ever was watching a marathon of it on New Year's Eve (the wine helped, too). Despite the fact I recognized that you finding true love would be as slim as people recognizing you without your makeup, I appreciate the guilty pleasure show portrayed both sides of the sexuality coin. You might be wondering why I writing I notice you doing a fur free campaign and I wanted to commend you for that. But um, I also remember you asking your contestants on the show to eat animal genitals as a of their love for you. Now, I acknowledge that we vegans shouldn turn on people fighting for the cause. After all, couldn each of us be guilty of some animal exploitation (from the pair of leather shoes owned to insulin injections)? I personally would hate it if someone sneered at my silk scarf while volunteering at an animal shelter. But uh, I can say I would EVER present my boyfriend a plate of pig vag yeah, and ask him to eat it. So for you to gleefully ask people to do so while months later have a poster of you hugging a white labrador retriever is just a little conflicting. That great that you don want you or your tween audiences (ok, me too I admit) to wear fur but let try not to eat them, either. You gave a quote on your website saying, don't know who those people are that have it in their hearts to skin an animal while it is still alive but I hope that by promoting fur alternatives I'm doing my part to stop that needless suffering." Personally, I will never understand how YOU had it in your heart (or your contestants) to promote the suffering of eating such animal body parts on the show. Then again, be it an unconventional body part like tongue or the breast of a chicken,http://efli.pl/, the act is the same. But still. It nasty. I guarantee you the chickens consumed on the show faced a death just as untimely as the animals in the fur industry (the chicken is just often boiled alive instead of being skinned alive like the rabbits). Just some food for thought. Anyway, Tila, I apologize for the scrutiny. I glad those who care about animals extend beyond the Birkenstock wearing, granola eating stereotype. In fact,birkenstock arizona, I won even object if you caught by the paparazzi eating a hamburger or something. But while in the limelight of TV, please know the ramifications of appearing as a spokesperson for something. In this case, if you ever asked to do another reality TV show, ask the producers to leave the carcasses off camera. The message will reach farther than any anti fur campaign. Thanks, and congrats on your pregnancy, Maybe it's time for another installment of your "Vegan's Letter to Obama"? During the Paris datenight visit, which cost taxpayers $75,000, the Obama's ordered ate foie gras, lamb and steak. I was surprised not to see veal or baby harp seal on the list just to round out the hyper abused animal list. I guess they are saving that for the next datenight trip to Italy. We recently went to an Italian restaurant in Tucson for my mother in law's birthday (her choice). The first FOUR menu items under the meat section were veal entrees. Under normal circumstances we would not have eaten at a place like serves veal, but it was her favorite, and her birthday. It seems like all of the meat based "delicacies" involve animal abuse. The greater the abuse, the more you can charge per plate. Weird. My wife is the Phoenix Animal Welfare Examiner. She posts a simple and quick vegan menu every Monday,birkenstock kids. Glad to see you are back writing again. Terror travels: Surviving the Oman House at the end of Cielo DriveA home constructed mere feet from the site where Sharon Tate was murdered has become a hotbed of paranormal activity. From full body apparitions to noises no human could possibly make, the Oman. Caring for the health of your lips: They not just there for beautyWhile some products use harsh chemicals and powerful natural extracts to 'plump' the lips, the systematic damage of the delicate tissues of the lips can lead to the premature aging of this area. Chan150629birkenstock shoes</li> Chan150629birkenstock white a</li> Chan150629yara birkenstock a</li> Chan150629birkenstock arizona</li> Chan150629birkenstock uk sale</li> Chan150629birkenstock arizona</li> Chan150629fitflop slippers p</li> </ul>

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In Defense Of Kitten Heels,birkenstock kids Kitten heels are back. Yes,http://efli.pl/, you heard us correctly. Don't act so surprised. Comfortable footwear is no stranger to fashion recently (the sneaker trend and Birkenstock fad have hit hard over the past year) and now,birkenstock shoes, a slightly more sophisticated shoe is set to take over. We know what you're thinking  kitten heels are unflattering and so 2002, but we're here to tell you that not only are they insanely practical, but they are also oh so stylish. They work all year round (yes, you CAN wear them with socks/tights) and they are very easy to work into your closet. Essentially you can treat them as a pair of regular heels and pro tip,fitflop slippers, they look especially great with cropped trousers. And if you're new at this, go for a neutral color instead of a bright or patterned pair. If you already own a pair, go into your closet, dust off your kitten heels and hit the town,birkenstock mayari, because Audrey Hepburn was onto something.<ul> <li>Chan150629birkenstock uk sale</li> <li>Chan150629birkenstock kids a</li> <li>Chan150629birkenstock sandals</li> <li>Chan150629birkenstock sandals</li> <li>Chan150629birkenstock boston</li> <li>Chan150629birkenstock usa HE</li> <li>Chan150629womens birkenstock</li> </ul>