Author: Adam Clare

America: Your Turn to Make Good News

To American Things Are Good readers, today YOU can make good news for the rest of the world by going out and voting for Obama.

Here’s ten reasons to vote for Obama:

Look to the future
Senator Obama offers the most comprehensive energy plan of any Presidential nominee in history, it will end our dependence on foreign oil and create as many as 5,000,000 jobs. Senator McCain’s plan continues the Bush Administration’s policy of appeasement to Big Oil, does nothing to reduce our dependence on oil, and isn’t as good as Paris Hilton’s.

You pollute, you pay
Obama and Biden support plan to make polluters pay for pollution credits and to clean up toxic waste. McCain wants us to foot the bill for clean-up and to give polluters billions in tax breaks and subsidies.

Keeping us healthy
Obama and Biden have fought to keep our air and water clean. McCain has voted against clean water ten times and voted six times to make it harder for states and the EPA to keep our air clean.

Listening to the scientists
The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that America must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Obama’s plan will reach that goal. McCain’s plan falls far short.

The record speaks for itself
Senator Barack Obama earned a lifetime environmental voting score of 86%. Senator Biden earned an 83%. Senator John McCain earned a 24% score.

Decisions are made by those who show up
In the last two years, John McCain missed EVERY SINGLE major vote on energy. One vital 2007 bill, to move billions of dollars in tax credits from the oil industry to wind, solar and other clean energy sources, failed by one vote: John McCain’s. Obama and Biden, also running for President, voted for it.

Saving money at the pump
Obama proposes to double the fuel efficiency of our cars in 18 years, reducing our oil consumption by at least 35% or 10 millions barrels per day. McCain voted against increasing fuel efficiency in 2003 and 2005. He missed the 2007 vote. Presumably, he ran out of gas.

We’re not alone
For more than 20 years, Joe Biden has been at the forefront of the fight against global warming. In 1986, he offered the first Senate bill to fight global warming pollution. Since then, he has been the Senate’s strongest voice for making America the international leader in reducing global warming pollution and exporting clean technology.

Higher standards
To create millions of new jobs, we must boost production of renewable electricity. Obama plans create 25% of our electricity from clean energy by 2025. McCain opposes any national renewable energy standard.

Judge him by his friends
Senator McCain accepted more than $2 million from the oil and gas industry, more than half of that since he changed his position on offshore drilling last month. His forthcoming plan to open America’s playgrounds and sandboxes to drilling is expected to net another $1.2 million.

Another Algae Find for Biofuel

Researchers in Thailand have found another species of algae that is a promising biofuel. This of course, should come to no surprise to regular Things Are Good readers because I love how algae will save us all, just look at all these good news algae posts.

Dr Leesing is confident that the algae can be effectively farmed for industrial biodiesel production as early as next April. She was also keen to stress that a KKU-S2 facility would not require much space. Quoting statistics from the US, she estimated that up to 136,900 litres of oil per hectare could be produced from the small green algae, compared with only 172 litres from corn.

The discovery is likely to prove of interest to producers looking for alternatives to biodiesel produced from food-based sources such as corn or soy, which have been criticised for their contribution to global food shortages, as well their negative impact on local biodiversity.

Grapes Help Your Heart

The very thing that can ferment to make delicious fluids can help your heart fresh from the vine! That’s right, grapes are good for your heart.

The researchers studied the effect of regular table grapes (a blend of green, red, and black grapes) that were mixed into the rat diet in a powdered form, as part of either a high- or low-salt diet. They performed many comparisons between the rats consuming the test diet and the control rats receiving no grape powder — including some that received a mild dose of a common blood-pressure drug. All the rats were from a research breed that develops high blood pressure when fed a salty diet.

In all, after 18 weeks, the rats that received the grape-enriched diet powder had lower blood pressure, better heart function, reduced inflammation throughout their bodies, and fewer signs of heart muscle damage than the rats that ate the same salty diet but didn’t receive grapes. The rats that received the blood-pressure medicine, hydrazine, along with a salty diet also had lower blood pressure, but their hearts were not protected from damage as they were in the grape-fed group.

Zoo Poo for Energy

The Toronto Zoo is looking into using all that dung that they have and turning into electricity to help make the zoo carbon neutral.

Zoo board members heard that a digester big enough to produce 4 megawatts could power the zoo plus 15,000 homes in Scarborough.

The technology isn’t new. It’s used extensively in Germany, for instance. Staff told the board the process doesn’t involve incineration, and there’s no combustion.

It could be running soon and would reduce the zoo’s carbon footprint by 40 per cent, staff said.

The zoo keeps a large pile of animal waste on site, some of which is used as fertilizer. One by-product of a biogas facility could be a higher-grade fertilizer, which De Baeremaeker suggested could be sold.

More Wave Power

A new way to catch wave power is really neat: it’s wave power through vortexes.

A bane of Big Oil’s offshore rigs could become a boon for renewable energy.
By tapping the natural motion of slow-moving water, a new hydrokinetic generator could open vast new swaths of the ocean for energy production.
When ocean currents flow over any kind of cylinder, like the long cables that hold drilling platforms in place, small vortices are created. They eventually spin away, or shed, causing vibrations that over time can destroy an oil rig’s moorings.
Now, a University of Michigan engineer who long worked on suppressing this phenomenon, has developed a prototype energy-harvester that can capture the mechanical energy it creates.