Some highlghts from Green Your Home For Winter: The Quick List
8. Refrigerator: Make sure your refrigerator door seals are airtight. Test them by closing the door over a dollar bill. If you can pull the bill out easily, the latch may need to be adjusted or the seal may need to be replaced. In addition, if you have a coil-back refrigerator, vacuum the coils at least twice each year. Your refrigerator will run more efficiently with clean coils. Also, stock up! A full refrigerator uses less energy than an empty one.
9. Faucets: Check for leaky faucets in kitchen and bathroom(s). Replace washers as necessary.
10.Windows and Doors: Seal drafty doors and windows. If you added up all of the small cracks where heating and cooling escapes from a home, it would be the same as having a window open. Replace seals as needed.
The refrigerator may be one that some folks overlook. The stocking up can also apply to other basic items that don’t require refrigeration. Let’s say someone doesn’t like to buy that huge case of toilet paper from a wholesale warehouse. Share a ride there with your neighbor then split those bulk supplies, and the gas to get back and forth to the store.
I wish that Congress wouldn’t put a jumbled mix of items into a bill as important as the financial rescue bill, but they did. The good news for anyone in the market for a hybrid is that it includes a large tax credit, Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle Credits Sweeten Bailout Bill
“The credit is a base $2,500 plus $417 for each kWh of battery pack capacity in excess of 4 kWh, to a maximum of $7,500 for light-duty vehicles,” up to $15,000 for vehicles weighting more than 26,000 pounds. Because the Chevy Volt has a 16-kWh battery pack, it would get the maximum credit.
Elusive cricket species found in England
One of Britain’s rarest insects, thought to be wiped out after an oil spill last year, has survived the ordeal, scientists say.
The Independent reported Saturday the cricket pseudomogoplistes vicentae, which is found mostly on the beaches of the Mediterranean and in only three places in Britain, was feared to have disappeared from Branscombe beach after the MSC Napoli was deliberately beached in January 2007.
That ship dumped tons of oil in addition to its cargo.
Cheney: Wildlife Conservation Has Been A ‘High Priority’ Of Bush Administration
Vice President Cheney spoke at the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy in Reno, NV, claiming that the Bush administration has championed wildlife preservation
When Dick was a kid I bet his mom always had to fellow him to the bathroom to watch him brush his teeth since he couldn’t be trusted to do it on his own. The League of Conservation Voters has said this administration probably has the worse environment record of any modern presidency. Every species put on the endangered list in the last eight years has not been because they were proactive, but because the Bush White House were forced to do so by lawsuits. Fish and Wildlife scientists were forced to alter reports to make them more in line with administration politics. Is that the kind of power the Founding Fathers envisioned, high ranking government officials altering facts to suit their agenda.
tangledwing 