China credits central controls as growth slows to 10.4% from 11.3%

China's annual growth slowed a little in the third quarter to 10.4 %, but the world's fourth-largest economy is still firmly on course to log a fourth consecutive year of double-digit expansion.

The slowdown, from 11.3% in the second quarter, followed a concerted campaign by Beijing to prevent a credit-fuelled investment boom from turning into a bust that could saddle the nation's banks with fresh bad loans.

"Excessive economic growth has been basically brought under control. This data shows that the tightening policies adopted by the central government have been timely and effective," Li Xiaochao, chief spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, told a news conference yesterday.

But the third-quarter's annual growth rate was still the second strongest since the fourth quarter of 2003 and Mr. Li said the economy was likely to keep up the momentum in the fourth quarter.

Gross domestic product in the first nine months grew 10.7% from a year earlier, faster than any other major economy.

JPMorgan responded by raising its forecast for 2006 GDP growth to 10.6% from 10.0% and for 2007 to 9.5% from 9.0%.

Wind power generation, by province (megawatts)
PROVINCE    INSTALLED    PROPOSED
British Columbia      0              325
Alberta                   285              235
Saskatchewan         171               25
Manitoba               104                0
Ontario                    221            1,059
Quebec                    212            1,244
New Brunswick             0               20
Nova Scotia               41               61
Prince Edward Island     14               39
Newfoundland              1                0
Yukon                          1                0

Congratulations on getting this up and running!  Hopefully you can figure out some way to get a lot of Canadian eyeballs drawn to this site.  Maybe featuring some controversial subjects will move you up the hit-tracking sites.  I would suggest doing a lot of Nafta and SuperNafta websearches: I think this will be growing concern for all Canadians.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Gold mine holds radioactive life, untouched by the Sun

The first known organisms that live totally independently of the sun have been discovered deep in a South African gold mine.

The bacteria exist without the benefit of photosynthesis by harvesting the energy of natural radioactivity to create food for themselves. Similar life forms may exist on other planets, experts speculate.
The bacteria live in ancient water trapped in a crack in basalt rock, 3 to 4 kilometres down.

Scientists from Princeton University in New Jersey, US, and colleagues analysed water from the fissure after it was penetrated by a narrow exploratory shaft in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. The shaft was then closed.

There were many species of bacteria present, but RNA sequencing showed most were a previously-unknown type of bacteria dubbed Desulfotomaculum.

Uranium and other radioactive elements in the rock emit radiation that shatters water molecules, producing high-energy hydrogen gas that is able to cleave chemical bonds.

The bacteria exploit this hydrogen gas to turn sulphate (SO4) molecules from the rock into hydrogen sulphide (H2S). It is the energy-trapping equivalent of photosynthesis. The energy of radiation, which makes hydrogen gas energetic enough to form these bonds, replaces the energy of the Sun.

The team examined the sulphur atoms in the hydrogen sulphide they found. The ratio of isotopes - different chemical forms of the same element - proved the sulphide was produced by living organisms, in a similar way that carbon dating can be used to show whether carbon compounds have been produced by living or non-living processes.

When Ontario resolved to close its 5 coal plants (what happened to that?!), someone noted it might not have that much effect, since the fumes of 421 US coal plants reach Ontario. Well, there's more on the way.

Anyone want to talk about clean coal? Wait 30 years, or give up now.

154 new US coal-fired power plants, 1 "clean"

Thanks to the high prices of oil and natural gas, the electricity industry is turning back to coal, America's oldest and most abundant fossil fuel, to drive a new generation of power plants. The upshot is that even as politicians take the threat of global warming more seriously, the problem may get much worse.

Utilities are proposing to build 154 coal-fired power plants in the next 25 years, according to "Coal's Resurgence in Electric Power Generation," a recent Department of Energy report.

Most of those new plants would use conventional coal-burning technology, which would increase carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal plants by more than 50 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytic division of the Energy Department. A traditional coal plant produces three to four times more CO2 - a potent "greenhouse gas" that traps the sun's heat and helps raise the Earth's temperature - than comes from a modern plant that uses natural gas as its fuel.

Operators of 66 of the proposed coal-fired plants plan to adopt more efficient, advanced technologies - such as turning coal into a gas before burning it - that produce less CO2 and other pollutants, said Erik Shuster, an analyst at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, W.Va.

But the rest would continue to use a 50-year-old technology that burns pulverized coal to create steam. The exhaust going up the stack contains 12 percent to 18 percent carbon dioxide.
Only one power company, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Corp., is planning to capture part of the carbon and store it before it enters the atmosphere.