Little waterfall Vancouver wallpaper, LED lighting sales take off, The southern toxic sludge capital

Little waterfall Vancouver wallpaper. Almost looks like part of a man made water garden, but its not.

Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting

Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology.

The recent phenomenal growth in the use LED lighting is surprising a lot of people. There are a couple factors contributing to their increased use, here and in Europe. One, costs have come down. Some cities such as Ann Arbor, Mich., and Raleigh, N.C. are using money from President Obama’s stimulus package to make the change in their street and public facilities lighting. It can take years to recoup the costs from lower energy use, but LEDS can last twenty years or more. One down side according to this article is that in a rush to capitalize on the sales of LEDs, some companies are using shoddy manufacturing processes which lower the longevity of the lights – so buyer beware.

Toxic Mud, Heading to Texas, Stirs Town

From the edge of town, one can see huge berms at the landfill where General Electric plans to bury the dried sludge that is tainted with 1.3 million pounds of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. They flowed into the upper Hudson from two G. E. factories for three decades before they were banned, in 1977. In high doses, the chemicals have been shown to cause cancer in animals and are considered a probable carcinogen in people.

The landfill lies five miles away in Texas, right across the state line, and belongs to Harold C. Simmons, a Dallas billionaire who was a large campaign contributor to former President George W. Bush and Gov. Rick Perry. (He also helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race and the advertisements linking President Obama to William Ayers in 2008.)

The landfill is located close to the Ogallala aquifer, but the feds ( the  Environmental Protection Agency in regional Dallas office)  and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have decided that it will be safe. Some residents near by in both New Mexico and Texas have complained, but to little effect so far. I can relate to one family that worried about their grandchildren growing up around a toxic landfill. The total amount of sludge containing the PCBs is estimated to be 2.5 million cubic yards.

Supreme Court nomeniee Judge Sonia Sotomayor does not have much of an environmental record, but some environmnetalists are citing one case in her favor, Sotomayor’s “Green” Decision

She found that the Clean Water Act prohibited EPA from conducting cost-benefit analysis when deciding whether to impose regulations at power plants that would protect fish, but have high costs for utility companies.

Environmentalists have been slow to realize that cost-benefit analysis can actually work to their favor most of the time. Think of the Texas town above. Over time the town will dwindle down to those that work the oil fields and take care of the sludge; they’ll be mostly dependent on that one industry to have a tax base.

Schwarzenegger Would Close 220 State Parks To Cut Deficit

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts could mean the closing of up to 220 state parks, among them the home of the world’s tallest tree and other attractions that draw millions of visitors. Schwarzenegger this week recommended eliminating $70 million in parks spending through June 30, 2010. An additional $143.4 million would be saved in the following fiscal year by keeping the parks closed.

“This is a worst-case scenario,” said Roy Sterns, a spokesman at the state parks department. “If we can do less than this, we will try. But under the present proposal, this is it.”

I’ve always thought that Schwarzenegger was in over his head, his ego told him he’d be great at governing the world’s fifth largest economy despite not having the intellect or governing skills required. That said this is only partly his fault. Because of California’s tax initiatives and the voter’s reluctance to do away with them there is very little he can do to rise revenue besides begging to the federal government.

Green Sea Turtle wallpaper, $3.5 billion laser goes live, Imitating plants to get hydrogen fuel

Green Sea Turtle coast of Malaysia wallpaper

What do you get for $3.5 billion? Hopefully you get the world’s coolest laser that just might edge us a little closer to clean plentiful fuel from fusion energy, The Hoped-For Laser Miracles

The latest focus, at least in promoting the project, has been the potential to achieve fusion energy, a carbon-free, widely available source of power should it ever prove attainable. The principal goal over the next year or two is to reach self-sustaining “ignition,” the point at which more energy is produced from fused atoms than is applied to make it happen. Scientists at NIF seem confident that they will succeed, but so many things have to go right simultaneously that many experts deem ignition unlikely any time soon. And even ignition is a long way from achieving practical, economical fusion power.

A more immediate payoff could come from basic research on processes that occur under pressures and temperatures typically found at the cores of stars or giant planets. Some critics view NIF as an expensive toy for weapons scientists. But the energy potential is alluring enough that all of us should root for NIF to succeed.

Basic research has a way of leading to new insights, what my old organic chemistry professor called the surrendipity of science. The Brits are covering the story and they sound even more excited about the possibilities then the NYT, Success at National Ignition Facility could pave the way for commercial laser fusion power stations and provide a solution to world energy crisis

A tentative first step towards an era of clean, almost limitless energy will take place today with the opening of a giant facility designed to recreate the power of the stars in an oversized warehouse in California.

…If the machine works as planned, it will become the first to generate more energy than it consumes, a feat that could pave the way for commercial laser fusion power stations and an end to the world’s energy security problems.

In the early 20th century inventors found that the best way to manned flight was not to imitate the experts, birds. When it comes to hydrogen fuel the best path this time might well be imitating nature’s experts, plants. Harnessing the Sun When It Doesn’t Shine

Our system uses sunlight to split water to oxygen and hydrogen. This is, indeed, how nature, through photosynthesis, stores solar energy.

I want you to realize that we need only a third of the amount of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool to produce enough hydrogen and oxygen per second, globally, to meet the world’s energy needs by mid-century. And it is carbon-neutral.
Question

Critics of solar energy point often to the fact that solar panels can’t provide energy when the sun isn’t shining. How do your designs compensate for this problem?
Answer

When the sun is shining, we take some of the output from the PV system and feed it to a water-splitting electrolyzer to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Then we store the oxygen and hydrogen, either as a gas or by fixing it with carbon. Then, when the sun goes down, we can recombine the oxygen and hydrogen in a fuel cell in order to get the energy back out.

The Office Spiny Lobster wallpaper

Wild Grasses with Seed Blooms wallpaper, Archaea strange life style, Super thin e-reader in the works

Wild Grasses with Seed Blooms wallpaper

The aliens have landed, but they’re microscopic and cannot live outside of one of the most inhospitable habitats on earth. Oh, yea, they also evolve, Geographic isolation drives the evolution of a hot springs microbe

Sulfolobus islandicus, a microbe that can live in boiling acid, is offering up its secrets to researchers hardy enough to capture it from the volcanic hot springs where it thrives. In a new study, researchers report that populations of S. islandicus are more diverse than previously thought, and that their diversity is driven largely by geographic isolation.

….S. islandicus belongs to the archaea, a group of single-celled organisms that live in a variety of habitats including some of the most forbidding environments on the planet. Once lumped together with bacteria, archaea are now classified as a separate domain of life. ( several biology text book publishers just got a servere headache)

….Whitaker’s team found that the variable genome in individual strains of S. islandicus is evolving at a rapid rate, with high levels of variation even between two or three individuals in the same location.

One of S. islandicus tricks to adaptation ans survival is stealing genes from plasmids and viruses located in their particular environment.

Plastic Logic’s Touch-Screen E-Reader

It’s still early days for e-readers, and consumers can only choose between a few chunky-looking models. But by next year, Plastic Logic, based in Cambridge, U.K., will start selling a sleek e-reader that’s the size of a standard sheet of paper and as thin as about six credit cards, and weighs less than a pound.

I’m not knocking Sony’s e-reader or the Kindle, but apparently you can load your MS word documents and pdf files into Plastic Logic’s device along with any annotations or highlights you’ve made. It also has an on screen keyboard and search function, which along with being able to sort various documents into folders makes organizing your documents, newspaper clips and e-Books easier.

China experts say Thailand’s new panda cub healthy

BANGKOK – A day-old panda cub whose birth surprised Thai zoo officials is a healthy female that appears to be bonding well with its much larger mother, Chinese experts concluded Thursday.

Officials at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand had tried unsuccessfully for years to breed the rare mammal and did not know the mother was pregnant. Thailand joins the United States and Japan as the only countries outside of China to breed a panda in captivity.

Thailand Panda Cub from the Chiang Mai Zoo

The Associated Press likes to huff and puff about bloggers using too much of their content and I generally try to respect that, but this story is basically a rewritten press release from the Chiang Mai Zoo, which is also where they got the picture. So should someone from AP drop by and have a problem, I have two words for you, bite me.

Artistic White Lillies wallpaper, A Nobel Prize-winning physicist and common-sense

Artistic White Lillies wallpaper

If a hundred anf fifty years ago I dragged my soapbox to the middle of the town square and started talking about how we should drill down into the earth, pump out a thick carbon based gunk, turn it into a fuel to run an internal combustion engine that set on a chassis with four wheels, spewing dangerous emissions as it clunked down the road. And further more doing so was the future. People would have paused long enough in their walk or horse drawn carriage to think I was crazy. Professor Steven Chu, currently our U.S. Energy Secretary has suggested something far less crazy then using fuel from millions of years old fossilized decay to base a transportation culture, he has simply reminded people of a basic premise in physics; light colors tend to reflect heat, dark colors tend to absorb heat. Easy enough to test, wear a navy blue short sleeve shirt on a warm sunny day and notice how hot the surface of the shirt and you get. Steven Chu: Obama’s green guru calls for white roofs

Professor described climate change as a “crisis situation”, and called for a whole host of measures to be introduced, from promoting energy efficiency to renewable energy such as wind, wave and solar.

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist said the US was not considering any large scale “geo-engineering” projects where science is used to reverse global warming, but was in favour of “white roofs everywhere”.

He said lightening roofs and roads in urban environments would offset the global warming effects of all the cars in the world for 11 years.

“If you look at all the buildings and if you make the roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour and if you do that uniformally, that would be the equivalent of… reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years – just taking them off the road for 11 years,” he said.

One doesn’t have to take the professor’s idea to a literal extreme. When the time comes for reshingling your house or apartment building you could use light colored shingles. And yes some house roofs could be painted white – it will reflect heat rather then absorbing it – thus your home will be cooler and your electric bill lower. The same concept would also work  on the hundreds of thousands of miles of black-top roads. As maintenance is required go with a lighter cement color. This all reminds me of the people that made fun of keeping your tires properly inflated –

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 1.2 billion gallons of gas are wasted annually due to under-inflated tires. By keeping tires properly inflated, drivers can improve their gas mileage by up to 3.3 percent.

Because of the model of car or one’s driving habits (racing the engine, riding the break, etc.) you may only save 1%, but it all adds up. The arguments about using these small, but in congregate, important changes can save emissions and fuel consumption – another way of saying saving money have are derided as silly and the counter argument is that everyone should be as decadently wasteful as they like. And I didn’t get the basic lessons about being less wasteful or being thoughtful of the next generation from college or reading environmental journals, I got it from my grandparents who lived through WW II. Conserving used to be considered a virtue, now it appears it is something to be contemptuous of.

Western waterfall wallpaper, Big business embraces green, Big plus small equals the new wave in energy innovation

Western waterfall wallpaper

U.S. Business is finally beginning to get the green message

Congress has wavered at this juncture before. It has succumbed to the false arguments that this transition would cost too much and burden business. Our present economic morass and the growing consequences of global warming should convince us that decisions made for short-term profit eventually are ruinous. Instead, we need foresight and a willingness to prepare for the future.

American business has the ingenuity and drive to lead the way. Many members of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), a coalition of national and global companies including Nike, Starbucks, Symantec, eBay, Sun Microsystems and Levi Strauss, already have recognized the opportunities at hand. Their pollution-reducing initiatives confirm what economic research has long demonstrated _ smart policy can prevent climate change and improve economic performance. RealClimateEconomics.org demonstrates the weight of economic analyses that support this conclusion.

These companies now deal with a hodge-podge of state and international laws. Innovative companies that embrace clean technologies need a level playing field to compete. And they need to imbed their strategies in a broad national agenda to remake our economy for a livable 21st century.

We need to put our labor force to work by accelerating that makeover. We need to stop sending $2 billion a day to foreign oil producers, and we need to slow the assault on our climate by embracing energy efficiency and proven alternatives to fossil fuels.

We can send the right signal by putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions _ polluting shouldn’t be free. With the right regulations and incentives we can reward industries that embrace a cleaner environment. We can stop subsidizing dirtier fuels and start promoting new technologies and energy savings.

The Waxman/Markey bill has many of these goals in its sights. It promotes clean energy and energy efficiency with a combination of incentives and gradual but mandatory targets. In the transition, it would create millions of good-paying jobs.

Not surprisingly the only large business concerns that is resisting the current climate bill is the coal industry.

Who Says Innovation Belongs to the Small?

But a shift in thinking is under way, driven by altered circumstances. In the United States and abroad, the biggest economic and social challenges — and potential business opportunities — are problems in multifaceted fields like the environment, energy and health care that rely on complex systems.

Solutions won’t come from the next new gadget or clever software, though such innovations will help. Instead, they must plug into a larger network of change shaped by economics, regulation and policy. Progress, experts say, will depend on people in a wide range of disciplines, and collaboration across the public and private sectors.

“These days, more than ever, size matters in the innovation game,” said John Kao, a former professor at the Harvard business school and an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.In its economic recovery package, the Obama administration is financing programs to generate innovation with technology in health care and energy. The government will spend billions to accelerate the adoption of electronic patient records to help improve care and curb costs, and billions more to spur the installation of so-called smart grids that use sensors and computerized meters to reduce electricity consumption.

Its not that small start-ups with new inventions and innovations do not have a vital role to play, only  they will be part of a wave of innovation. The small inventors and tinkerers will help drive new ways of doing things that the giants like G.E. and Microsoft have the power to part of a new, greener standard. The failure of the big energy and technology sectors to embrace the small but vital innovations, new software and devices will not have the new thinking needed to make the big changes. Big is not bad, small is not the savior, its the melding of the two that will drive the future of energy management.