Bloomberg suggests,
and Joe Romm reiterates, that McCain's plan to build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030 might cost the taxpayers almost a third of a trillion dollars, or $ 315 billion. Now that's not much these days, considering what is being racked up for the Iraq war and the Fannie Mae debacle, but to paraphrase Everett Dirkson, a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
...
Image from *Micky
It's not a sure-fire bet, but NASA climate scientist James Hansen and several colleagues have published an article in the latest issue of
Global Biogeochemical Cycles making the case that curbing coal emissions alone could forestall a full-blown climate crisis. While they also recommend reducing the use of oil and gas, they estimate that phasing out coal, which has accounted for roughly 80% of emissions growth since the pre-industrial era (and still contributes a healthy slice), over the next few decades could prevent the planet from entering a prolonged period of climate change.
Instead, humans should grow more trees and burn them to produce electricity, capturing and storing the carbon dioxide generated during the process to further mitigate the environmental toll, Hansen told
The Independent's Geoffrey Lean. ...
Image Courtesy of Power Vote
The
Energy Action Coalition is spearheading
Power Vote, a political movement focused on getting young voters to register and to support
clean energy initiatives in the upcoming election cycles. The concept is simple: interested or concerned youth log on to the
Power Vote website, and sign a pledge to make voting for clean and
renewable energy their priority this election. And it’s gaining traction fast—Power Vote went from 2,802 to 102,412 pledge signatures in two weeks. At that rate, the organization’s goal of one million pledges seems like no problem. But what, exactly, will the youth of Power Vote do?...
There's a Green Map hanging in my hallway at home, and once in awhile I glance at it and think oh yeah, I should use this more, have it with me in the bike bag. But the problem with the Green Map is that it can show you where a bike collective is located (and that's great) but gives you little to no info on the place itself.
Green Maps to become interactive green social networks
Until now. The Green Maps non-profit is taking their maps along with a system of icons, and a dedicated group of map-makers interactive. Over 450 cities, towns and other areas already have a Green Map in printed or online format. When Open Green Map debuts a little later this year, map users will be able to unite as green communities. As Wendy Breyer of Green Map Systems commented to the Media Shift Idea Lab blog, with Open Green Map:
"It happens, it becomes data, it gets mapped."
...
Mike over at Inhabitat tipped us on
Inhabitat's review of the
Black Cloud Project. The group's name, the Black Cloud Citizen Science League, glows with the promise of super-heroic aid in the time of need.
But are you in need? Indeed, if you consider that what you don't know can hurt you. The students at the Manual Arts high school in Los Angeles certainly learned an interesting lesson. What started as a game has now grown into a community project. If you want to know the secret identities of the Black Cloud Citizen Science League, read on....
Image from jurvetson
Following on the heels of a recently published study in the journal
Nature Geoscience, which estimated that
Arctic permafrost could hold 60% more organic carbon than previously thought, a team of scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has found that the planet's permafrost layers -- comprising an area that covers a fifth of Earth's land mass --
store twice as much methane and carbon dioxide as previously believed.
The results of their study, published in the journal
Bioscience, state that permafrost layers located at high altitudes contain over 1500 billion tons of CO2 and methane, or twice the amount of GHG currently present in the atmosphere. ...
Watergoat Trash Debris Boom
Much like its notoriously un-picky mammalian counterpart, the new storm system trash collector the
Watergoat from First Earth Industries gathers any and all garbage that coasts through its path. The Watergoat is essentially a
storm water debris boom made simple: it’s a nylon net that forms a floating barrier around a storm drain’s outlet, and it can collect up to hundreds of pounds of trash every rain cycle.
Any trash that gets sucked down a storm drain during a heavy rain naturally follows the path of the water current until it’s let out into a river, lake, ocean, or other body of water.
Water debris booms like the Watergoat can prevent that trash from seeping out. Yet the
Watergoat Island, an accompanying product from New Earth Industries, may actually be the more interesting of the new Watergoat products thanks to its ability to enrich and absorb harmful elements out of a trash-laden lake. Here's how it works. ...
Despite the major improvements made in satellite technology and modeling over the past few years, predicting future climate change remains a tricky matter. Taking into account the often conflicting reams of data provided by researchers and monitoring technologies results in the creation of imperfect models that inevitably fail to accurately represent all aspects of the changing climate.
It is in the hope of tackling this vexing problem that scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) are preparing to launch the
Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), which will help improve measurements of the Earth's gravitational field and, in turn, improve predictions about climate change. The satellite will help climate scientists arrive at a more accurate picture of the ocean currents,
The Guardian's James Randerson reports, by comparing their surface shape with the fluctuations in the planet's gravitational field....
1 Gear is All You Need
Tesla Motors, makers of the much talked about Tesla Electric Roadster, has just announced that it has selected BorgWarner to produce the new Roadster 1-speed transmission (ratio of 8.2752:1, can go up to 14,000 RPM).
More Powerful and Efficient
The updated version 1.5 powertrain, which also includes a more powerful inverter and an enhanced motor design, will produce 30% more torque (to 280 foot-pounds) while also increasing the EPA rated range of the electric car by 10% to 244 miles (393 kilometers), up from 221 miles (255 klicks). The ¼ mile time for the car is now in the 12.9 second range.
But what happens to those lucky few who have Tesla Roadsters with the old powertrain?...
To raise awareness of global warming, one of the two main newspapers in Greenland, Sermitslaq, has set up an 'ice cam' located on one of the largest inland glaciers, Ilulissat, to show it melting - as you watch! Updated hourly. It seems a sad state that we can watch (it is a bit like watching paint dry) though not really do much.
Melting ice, rising seas
Greenland's inland ice covers 1.7 million square kilometers - about 80 percent of the country's total area, and is estimated to be about 110,000 years old. A NASA satellite shows that about 239 cubic kilometers of the ice cap is melting each year. The faster it melts, the faster the sea rises, the theory goes. Some of the effects of global warming, while they are happening faster in the Arctic, can be considered to be of benefit to Greenland's small human population. Tourism is increasing (though watch out for
killer glacial waves), and the country's government is planning on bottling the melting water for boutiques in cities like New York and Tokyo as well as brewing beer from it. Via
::Sermitsiaq.gl
Read more
Greenland Wants to Bottle Iceberg Water
Global Warming Beer: Greenland Brews With Melting Ice Cap
The Upside of Global Warming?...
With the school year just beginning and Christmas not too far away there’s a great line of plush toys designed to help teach kids about the world around them that just may work well in the early elementary or PreK classroom or even as a stocking stuffer.
The toys, called Idbids, are a trio of colorful characters that each encourage kids to make “iddy biddy” steps to go green through various activities that work to simplify complex issues and make them easy for kids to understand.
Each character has green feet, it’s very own personality and is dedicated to a particular environmental element.
...
I do... Want Solar Power
Our friends at the
Daily Green have a nice heart-warming story about Sarah and Kiril Lozanov, a young couple who decided to use their wedding registry to go
solar. They couldn't afford the 1.7kw solar system needed to power their 800 sq. ft. condo by themselves.
"As we curled up to create our gift registry, we talked about the kind of life we wished to lead,” recalled Sarah Lozanov, a renewable energy specialist at
Solar Servicein Illinois. “We thought about the clean, healthy world we value, and concluded that the only thing really wanted was a solar system,” she said.
Read on to find out how they educated their families about solar power and what commitments they had to make to their homeowner’s association....
Plug-in Hybrid Trial
Toyota and EDF (Électricité de France) has had a partnership to test plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) for over a year now. It started in France, and it is now expanding to the UK. The plug-in hybrids are modified
Toyota Prius hybrids. Extra NiMH battery packs extend their all-electric range, and they can be recharged from the grid (something the regular Prius can't do).
Plug-In Prius Hybrids in the UK
According to
Toyota (pdf), "The UK partnership is designed to evaluate vehicle performance within an urban environment, vehicle infrastructure requirements, and driver behaviours and expectations." Read on for more on the UK trial....
Halogen-Free CPUs
Chip-maker Intel has
announced that is has started shipping four halogen-free Xeon processors (series 5200 and 5400). The chips are functionally the same as the previous versions, and they are drop-in compatible.
What's Wrong With Halogens?
Halogens might not sound that bad because we're familiar with the word (all those lamps), but the Halogen family includes fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. "Halogens are highly reactive, and as such can be harmful or lethal to biological organisms in sufficient quantities." Now, we're not saying that your CPU is dangerous to you (don't try too eat it, though), but over the manufacturing of millions of them, it adds up to a lot of halogens. Removing them will no doubt make electronics recycling safer....
photo: USGS
Just a quick update to a post done back in July on the geothermal
exploration rights on several Alaskan volcanoes being put on the auction block. Mount Spurr, a snowcapped 11,070 foot tall volcano about 75 miles west of Anchorage was the first one up and
Ormat Technologies is the lucky winner.
The Reno, Nevada-based company paid $3.3 million for the right to investigate the geothermal power potential of 15 of the 16 tracts being offered for lease on Mt Spurr,
Cleantech reports.
I just love the understatement used by Ormat in talking about their plans:...
Windbelt (that device on the table...) charging a cell phone. Photo: Humdinger Wind.
It was nearly a year ago when TreeHugger first reported on the
Windbelt , an innovative new wind energy technology which eschews turbines altogether. The technology was a
Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award winner but we hadn’t heard too much about it since then until now.
Shawne Frayne, president of
Humdinger Wind Energy and the Windbelt’s inventor, is one of five finalists for the
Curry Stone Design Prize. He’s up against some stiff competition—check out the other
Curry Stone finalists— but if he comes out on top Frayne will claim a $100,000 prize. We’ll find out on September 25th when the winner is announced at the
IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky.
For those who missed it the first time around, here’s how the Windbelt works:
...
Heavy Metal Thunder No More: Wind of Change
All eyes are currently on hybrids (such as
Honda's upcoming all-new Insight) and
electric cars, but electric motorcycles also deserve some attention (if only because they are less noisy). We've featured a few DIY models, like the
Voltzilla and the
electric Kawasaki, but so far few big players have made them, which has allowed newcomers like
Vectrix to get a toehold. But that's about to change.
Honda and Yamaha to Make Electric Motorcycles
According to
Nikkei, "Both firms hope to bring to market electric motorcycles that perform on a par with bikes with 50 cc engine displacements. The vehicles will be powered by high-performance lithium ion batteries."...
Kidney Stones More Frequent Because of Global Warming
According to a study published in the July 15 issue of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (and reported in the September issue of
Scientific American), Kidney Stones will be more frequent during the 21st century.
It's not exactly making headlines, but according to the researchers, there could be an extra 1.6 to 2.2 million cases of kidney stones by 2050, a 7 to 10% increase on the current numbers. This could cost about 1.3 billion of medical costs, and of course cause a lot of pain.
Why Will Kidney Stones Become More Frequent?
The minerals that are dissolved in urine can crystalize under certain condition, and one of the contributing factors is dehydration. Read on for more details about geographical risk factors....
Back in the beginning of the summer we heard about plans to develop what at the time would have been world’s largest thin-film solar PV plant, a
10 megawatt facility outside of Las Vegas. Around the same time a
25 megawatt solar PV plant in Florida (using regular solar panels) was announced. While technically records, both really wouldn’t provide that much power in the grand scheme of things.
Well, oh what a difference a couple of months can make. In the past month alone the scale of some of the new solar power plants being planned has increased such that you really should sit up at take notice. Granted, all of these are either in the planning stages or in the very first phases of construction—it wouldn’t surprise if some of these plans get revised—but still, solar power plants that rival fossil fuel power plants in size is a huge boost for renewable energy. So check ‘em out:
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
If you’ve been waiting for something great to make you stand up and find a way to change the world there’s no doubt that the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge is built for you. Launched in collaboration between the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the Siemens Foundation and Discovery Communications as a means to educate, empower and inspire students and their teachers to become agents of change in making the environment a top issue in their neck of the woods. 
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Photo: Cypress graveyard due to saltwater intrusion (
