burfman
burfman's JournalMylan releases a half-price generic version of EpiPen
Source: Washington Post
Months after promised, Mylan has launched a half-price authorized generic of EpiPen, the lifesaving allergy injection that drew ire for its dramatic price increases.
A two-pack of the generic EpiPen will carry a list price of $300 and will reach pharmacies next week, the company announced Friday. In late August, Mylan said it would make the authorized generic, stating at the time that the drug would be available within “several weeks.”
Mylan chief executive Heather Bresch appeared before Congress in September to defend the price hikes of EpiPens. Since Mylan acquired the drug in 2007, the price has risen from less than $100 for a two-pack to more than $600. Sales of the drug have grown since then, from less than $200 million to nearly $1.7 billion last year, according to data from IMS Health.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/16/mylan-releases-a-half-priced-generic-version-of-epipen/?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.4d23469740e5
It's hard to argue when you have a gun pressed to your head......
In 2007 it was two for $100 and now the 'generic' is two for $300
yeah it's down from two for $600, but they still have managed to triple the price over what it was 10 years ago.
Even allowing for inflation they are still screwing the public.
Offshore wind, which Trump fought in Scotland, is finally up and running in the U.S.
Source: Washington Post
The Block Island Wind Farm, a 30 megawatt (or 30 million-watt) installment off the Rhode Island coast, went into regular operation Monday marking the beginning of a bona fide new source of electricity in the United States. Although countries such as Britain and China have many of them, this is the first fully operational U.S. offshore wind-farm installment.
Deepwater Winds chief executive, Jeff Grybowski, said in an interview with The Post: Taking offshore wind from a theoretical thing to a reality is what Block Island has done. As the first project to cross the finish line, its really proven that offshore wind can be done in the United States. It has proven that the industry and Deepwater as a company can do what we say we can do.
He said that on an annual basis, the five turbines off Block Island should be able to produce enough electricity to power about 17,000 households. The company already is working on a 90-megawatt project, to be located off the east end of Long Island, that Grybowski said could be operational in about five years and would be the nations second offshore wind farm. Deepwater is also one of multiple companies that have proposed a project about 17 miles off the shore of Ocean City, Md.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/12/trump-fought-offshore-wind-in-scotland-now-the-u-s-has-its-first-farm-in-operation/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-business%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.e0b50b34747a#comments
Well there we go finally - an actual off shore wind power installation.
Hopefully those from both political parties (Cape Wind) won't stand in the way building more of these.
I think wind turbines look a whole lot better than burning fossil fuels.......
Burfman..............
FYI: Cape Wind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind#Controversy
An article by the NY Times on the Block Island Wind Farm: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/science/wind-power-block-island.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-0&action=click&contentCollection=Science®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
What watching this year's presidential campaign has been like.
With thanks to gamefly.....
Renewable Energy Grows in an Unlikely Place: the Sunny Mideast
Source: NY Times
The region’s biggest energy divide is between countries rich in oil and gas, most notably Saudi Arabia, and those that must buy fuel beyond their own borders. Both have an incentive to expand solar generation — oil- and gas-producing nations so they can sell more of what they drill and importers to reduce their dependence on volatile international markets.
Not surprisingly, though, it is the energy importers who are moving most aggressively.
For countries like Jordan, which endured disruptions to natural gas supplies from Egypt when a pipeline was repeatedly bombed during the Arab Spring uprisings, energy independence is a question of political and economic security.
The Shams Ma’an solar farm, built by First Solar and owned by a consortium of companies, began commercial operation in September near the ancient city of Petra, generating enough power for 35,000 homes, First Solar, which is based in Arizona, said.
And the 38-turbine Tafila wind farm increased Jordan’s total power capacity by 3 percent when it opened last year, said Masdar, one of the project’s developers.
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority said in May that it had received a bid of 2.99 United States cents per kilowatt-hour from developers vying to be part of the third phase of the giant Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Solar Park, expected to be among the world’s largest when complete.
It was a record that did not stand long. In September, neighboring Abu Dhabi received a bid of 2.42 cents, marking another milestone in a sector whose costs have been dropping drastically toward competitiveness with more traditional fuels.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-grows-in-an-unlikely-place-the-sunny-mideast.html?action=click&contentCollection=Energy%20%26%20Environment%20&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
I don't know what to make of those prices - 2.99 cents per kilowatt-hour in Dubai and 2.42 center per kilowatt-hour in Abu Dhabi.
Maybe it's due to the amount of sunny days per year and the fact that they have lots of 'free' land to build on out in the desert.
Sounds really cheap, pretty much what the price for burning coal is as shown on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Things continue to get better for cleaning up the air on this planet.
Burfman.........
Vermont Wind Project Needs Support, So Company Offers to Pay Voters
Source: NY Times
WINDHAM, Vt. — To many residents in this tiny town in southern Vermont, the last-minute offer of cash was a blatant attempt to buy their votes.
To the developer that offered the money, it was simply a sign of how attentively the company had been listening to voters’ concerns.
The company, Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish energy developer, wants to build Vermont’s largest wind project on a private forest tract that spans Windham and the adjacent town of Grafton. The project would consist of 24 turbines, each nearly 500 feet tall, and generate 82.8 megawatts of power, enough to light 42,000 homes for a year if the wind kept blowing, though the houses could be in Connecticut or Massachusetts.
Residents of the two towns will vote Nov. 8 on whether to approve the project, which has pitted neighbor against neighbor. No one knows which way the vote will go.
That same day, residents statewide will be voting for governor. Wind development has become an issue in that race, which The Cook Political Report rates a tossup, and sentiment here could be decisive in the outcome.
Facing the possibility that voters here may reject the proposal, putting a damper on large-scale wind development in Vermont, Iberdrola last week put cash on the table for individual voters.
Many residents called the offer an attempt at undue influence, if not an outright bribe. But after a review, the state attorney general’s office said that the offer did not appear to violate state law.
Still, the individual payments — a total of $565,000 a year to 815 registered voters in both towns, or $14.1 million over 25 years — on top of millions more to the towns, suggest how much is at stake for the company. Iberdrola has been trying to persuade voters here for more than four years to approve the project, in a state that is actively seeking clean-energy development.
Vermont’s energy goals are among the most ambitious in the country: to derive 90 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2050.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat who is not seeking re-election after nearly six years in office, has been the state’s chief proponent of clean energy.
“There’s nothing I’m more proud of than my legacy of having helped to get Vermont off of oil and coal and moved us more aggressively than any other state in the nation to renewables,” he said.
The state has 20 times as much wind power as it had when he took office and 11 times the number of solar panels. Electricity rates in Vermont have dropped while soaring in the rest of New England.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/vermont-wind-project-needs-votes-so-company-offers-to-pay-voters.html?hpw&rref=us&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
What a deal - how could one refuse? Help out clean wind power, keep electric rates low and get paid $427 or $1,125 / year for 25 years if you live in one of the two towns.....
Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs
We (the USA) need to be part of the solution, not the problem.A really thought provoking op-ed piece in today's NY TImes:
burfman......................
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/want-to-make-ethical-purchases-stop-buying-illegal-drugs.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Many of my friends and classmates here in the United States care about making the world a better place, and they try to make purchases that reflect their values. Some have become vegetarians to save animals or fight climate change. Others buy cruelty-free cosmetics, fair-trade coffee or conflict-free diamonds.
Yet I’ve noticed at parties and festivals that some of these same people pop Ecstasy or snort cocaine. They think this drug use is a victimless crime. It’s not. Follow the supply chain and you’ll find a trail of horrific violence.
In Mexico, the official death toll from the past decade’s drug trade stands at over 185,000, with many of the dead innocent bystanders. And these tallies don’t include the thousands of people who have disappeared, including four members of my family who were kidnapped and never seen again. We were deprived of our loved ones without explanation, without even their bodies to cry over.
I was born and raised in a midsize town in northern Mexico. As a child, I biked and skated in the streets. But these days, kids aren’t allowed to play outside. Everyone has a heartbreaking story of how the drug trade has damaged his life.
Violence — whether among cartels, or between cartels and government forces — plagues cities along drug trafficking routes. Shops and restaurants shut their doors, employees are laid off. Cartel members routinely steal cars at gunpoint. They take over houses and factories for shelter and fire automatic weapons in public spaces. My relatives have been forced to drop to the ground at home and at the supermarket to avoid being shot.
While studying at Stanford University and living in California, I realized that most Americans — even those who consider themselves worldly and social-justice-oriented — remain unaware of their role in this violence.
The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, constitutes more than 30 percent of the global demand for illegal drugs, according to my calculations. Yes, there are addicts, but experts estimate that eight in 10 users — more than 20 million people in this country — take drugs recreationally. They come from all walks of life — artists, bankers, engineers, and high school, college and graduate students.
Most of these users know little of the Mexican cartels that produce the marijuana, cocaine, MDMA, meth, fentanyl, heroin and other drugs in Mexico, or import them from Asia or South America. But the biggest money in the drug business comes not from producing drugs but from smuggling them across the border and getting them to users, which requires cartels to control every step along the trafficking routes. To maintain that control, they fight over highways, ports, border crossings and political influence.
To prevent smaller criminal groups from growing and eventually competing with them, cartels also control other activities like human trafficking, kidnapping, music and software piracy, extortion and prostitution.
And to protect their huge profits, they kill competitors, journalists, policemen and innocents. My friend Maria, mother of a 14-year-old son, temporarily fled her low-income neighborhood in the city of Monterrey with her family when she realized a cartel was forcing boys to join the business. Two nights after their return, armed men entered her house and killed her son in front of her in retaliation.
While Mexico endures these atrocities, Americans are spending billions of dollars on illegal drugs. Exact figures for an illicit market are hard to obtain but estimates put the number at over $150 billion per year — more than the federal government spends on education, and four times as much as it spends on law enforcement. And Mexican cartels control virtually all of the American market, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
If cartels continue to have an incentive of that magnitude, our governments will never be able to put an end to the violence.
That’s why Americans must recognize that every time they buy illegal drugs they reward the cartels. If you think one person’s consumption is too small to make a difference, consider that $100 — what a recreational cocaine user might spend on a single weekend — buys the cartels 500 rounds of ammunition; $500 buys a new AR-15 rifle; $700 covers the monthly salary of one of their gunmen.
Without the vast profits from the drug trade, cartels would be infinitely less powerful, and our governments could neutralize them.
If you use illegal drugs, even just occasionally, please reconsider. Lives are at stake. Go for legal vices if you must. Even if you never use illegal drugs, you probably know people who do. Tell them about the trail of blood that led to their night of partying. If they had seen it firsthand, as I have, they wouldn’t buy those drugs.
We can shatter the misconception that recreational drug use is a victimless crime. We must put an end to the hypocrisy that allows people to make purchases based on their concerns about the environment, workers’ rights or animals — but not about killing people in Mexico.
Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs
Source: NY Times
Many of my friends and classmates here in the United States care about making the world a better place, and they try to make purchases that reflect their values. Some have become vegetarians to save animals or fight climate change. Others buy cruelty-free cosmetics, fair-trade coffee or conflict-free diamonds.
Yet I’ve noticed at parties and festivals that some of these same people pop Ecstasy or snort cocaine. They think this drug use is a victimless crime. It’s not. Follow the supply chain and you’ll find a trail of horrific violence.
In Mexico, the official death toll from the past decade’s drug trade stands at over 185,000, with many of the dead innocent bystanders. And these tallies don’t include the thousands of people who have disappeared, including four members of my family who were kidnapped and never seen again. We were deprived of our loved ones without explanation, without even their bodies to cry over.
I was born and raised in a midsize town in northern Mexico. As a child, I biked and skated in the streets. But these days, kids aren’t allowed to play outside. Everyone has a heartbreaking story of how the drug trade has damaged his life.
If you use illegal drugs, even just occasionally, please reconsider. Lives are at stake. Go for legal vices if you must. Even if you never use illegal drugs, you probably know people who do. Tell them about the trail of blood that led to their night of partying. If they had seen it firsthand, as I have, they wouldn’t buy those drugs.
We can shatter the misconception that recreational drug use is a victimless crime. We must put an end to the hypocrisy that allows people to make purchases based on their concerns about the environment, workers’ rights or animals — but not about killing people in Mexico.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/want-to-make-ethical-purchases-stop-buying-illegal-drugs.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
We (people of the USA) need to become part of the solution instead of the problem.
9/11 responder with cancer: "They died and we’re dying"
Source: CBS News
More than 5,000 cases of cancer have been linked to the toxic dust workers encountered in lower Manhattan after the attacks. One of the heroes now fighting for his life is Sal Turturici, an EMT with the New York Fire Department.
The federal government’s World Trade Center Health Program has linked Turturici’s condition to the toxins he faced at ground zero. He joins a growing list of responders who’ve fallen ill, long after the attacks.
Among the nearly 75,000 responders and survivors health officials are monitoring, they’ve certified more than 5,400 patients with 9/11-related cancers. According to Dr. Crane, that number continues to rise.
“Here at Sinai, we see 10 to 15 new cancer patients in our population every week,” Crane said.
Early studies have found 9/11 responders may have about a 10 to 30 percent higher risk of cancer than the general population. But according to doctors, there’s still a lot of research that needs to be done to understand exactly why this is happening.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/september-11-attacks-anniversary-15-years-first-responders-cancer/
What was our government doing while the responders were shifting through the rubble?
Check out this link on Democratic Underground:
Former EPA head admits she was wrong to tell New Yorkers post-9/11 air was safe
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141569932
Also check out this article from the Union of Concerned Scientists article at:
http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/ground-zero-air-pollution.html#.V9WcfnUoSAm
Burfman.......
The Price of Solar Is Declining to Unprecedented Lows
Source: Scientific American
Now, the latest data show that the continued decrease in solar prices is unlikely to slow down anytime soon, with total installed prices dropping by 5 percent for rooftop residential systems, and 12 percent for larger utility-scale solar farms. With solar already achieving record-low prices, the cost decline observed in 2015 indicates that the coming years will likely see utility-scale solar become cost competitive with conventional forms of electricity generation.
A full analysis of the ongoing decline in solar prices can be found in two separate Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Reports: Tracking the Sun IX focuses on installed pricing trends in the distributed rooftop solar market while Utility-Scale Solar 2015 focuses on large-scale solar farms that sell bulk power to the grid.
Put together, the reports show that all categories of solar have seen significantly declining costs since 2010. Furthermore, larger solar installations consistently beat out their smaller counterparts when it comes to the installed cost per rated Watt of solar generating capacity (or $/WDC).
Perhaps the most interesting piece of data to come out in the latest Lawrence Berkeley National Lab reports is the trend in the price of solar power purchase agreements or PPAs. These prices reflect the price paid for long-term contracts for the bulk purchase of solar electricity. The latest data show that the 2015 solar PPA price fell below $50 per megawatt-hour (or 5 cents per kilowatt-hour) in 4 of the 5 regions analyzed. In the power industry, the rule of thumb for the average market price of electricity is about $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour—so solar is poised to match the price of conventional power generation if prices continue to decline.
Read more: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-price-of-solar-is-declining-to-unprecedented-lows/
Well it looks like things are continuing to get better for solar power.
Looks like the day will come - driven entirely by the economic bottom line - when most new power plants will either be solar or wind.
Fossil fuels will still be needed to fill in the gaps (night time, no wind, etc) until we have cheaper batteries.
Which if enough people are driving battery cars (the middle class Tesla?) might happen sooner than we think.
Burfman..................
The nation’s first offshore wind farm is ready to go, despite critics’ blowback
Source: Washington Post
BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — The turbines stand like sentinels off the coast of this tiny island, each rising twice as high as the Statue of Liberty. Workers attached the final 240-foot-long blades just days ago, turning the nation’s first offshore wind farm into a reality.
When residents look out at the altered horizon from their gray-shingled houses, some see progress, the birth of a promising industry, a way to ditch the 1 million gallons of diesel fuel that Block Island burns each year for power.
Others see an expensive eyesore, a boondoggle that they contend will enrich private investors while burdening the state’s ratepayers and doing little to improve daily life here. One group went to federal court in an unsuccessful effort to stall the project.
The country’s inaugural foray into offshore wind power is modest compared with the sprawling developments that have existed in Europe for decades. The five-turbine, 30-megawatt project, which is set to start operating this fall, will feed into New England’s electrical grid via underwater cables and provide enough energy to power about 17,000 homes.
But here’s what makes it momentous: It exists.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-nations-first-offshore-wind-farm-is-ready-to-go-despite-critics-blow-back/2016/08/27/7a43c6d6-693f-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html
The article did not mention a key reason that this is the first place to have off-shore wind power.
The price of electricity on Block Island is about 58 cents a kilowatt!
This is probably due to the fact that most of the power comes from diesel generators on the island. The article did mention that the average price nation wide is 12 1/3 cents per kilowatt. Well with high prices like that on Block island, paying the operator of the windmill 24 cents a kilowatt is a real bargain.
As you can see from this entry on Wikipedia, off shore power is more expensive at present, but like solar and on-shore wind power it will continue to get cheaper with time.
On a trip to Acadia park up in Maine, I did see some of those little stinky diesel generators, spewing out smoke 24/7. I assume that they are smaller versions of the ones on Block Island, but I don't know for sure.
http://energypolicyupdate.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-8-2010-maine-ocean-energy-rfp.html
In any case, let's hope that this first installation of off shore wind power is followed by many more...................
Burfman...........
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Member since: Thu Jan 16, 2014, 03:01 PMNumber of posts: 264