Environment

Greener Chip Manufacturing Process

- Benny Powers

In a story that is making it’s way around the web, researchers at the University College London have devised a new way to produce computer chips.

computer chip

The production of computer chips currently takes a vast amount of energy to heat furnaces to 1000 degrees Celsius. The heat transforms silicon to silicon dioxide, a key ingredient of computer chips. The new process encourages this reaction using cool ultraviolet light instead of intense heat.

Computer manufacture is one of the most polluting industries out there. This is one step towards reversing that trend.

Building Green = $$$

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

A new study by the Real Property Association of Canada reveals that adding green features to a building equals better sale value!

“Rick Nevin and Gregory Watson found that people pay $10-$20 more for a home for every $1 reduction in annual fuel bills.

The Heschong Mahone Group found that ‘adding skylighting to the average non-skylit retail store would be likely to improve its performance by 40%’.

Pennsylvania Power and Light noted a conversion’s electricity savings amounted to a payback in 4.1 years with a 24% return on investment.However benefits from lower absenteeism and higher productivity meant a simple payback of just 69 days,a 540% return on investment…

Not only are green buildings good for the environment, provide healthier places to live and more productive places to work ,they can command higher rents and prices, attract tenants more quickly, reduce tenant turnover and cost less to operate and maintain.”

And in other building related green new, scientists have figured out how to use people power!

Bush Protects Environment???

- Vanessa King

With all the stories lately about the U.S. president avoiding important environmental issues, this recent news is a truely refreshing change. President George W Bush has recently established the largest protected marine area in the World, in Hawaii. The Northwestern Hawaiian Island Marine National Monument stretches 2,600 kilometers across the central Pacific Ocean and is home to a variety of species that are not found anywhere else on the planet. It is also the largest and healthiest coral-reef system in the United States.

Protection of the area will ensure that unauthorized passage of ships will be prohibited, as well as unauthorized recreational or commercial activity, removal of coral wildlife minerals and other resources or waste dumping.

Fun GM Hy-wire Video

- Adam Clare

The GM Hy-wire is a leap forward for a car manufacture insofar that it is a total rethink of the automobile. The main factor is that the engine is non internal combustion and can power half a block of houses with its hydrogen engine.

Here’s a video of the fun auto show Top Gear describing the neatness of the car (fast forward to the 1 min mark).

U.S. Supreme Court to Decide on Global Warming

- Adam Clare

I was shocked when I read that the United State’s supreme court is set to hear a case about global warming. Of course this obviously good because it forces some accountability on Bush’s administration, especially since he promised to curb CO2 emissions, but has failed to deliver. The court case basically concerns whether or not the government has the responsibility to ensure clean air, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The decision to hear the case sets up a legal showdown over President George W. Bush’s controversial position on global warming and his apparent reversal on the issue of regulating carbon dioxide.
…
The plaintiffs believe that the environmental and economic threats from climate change merit aggressive action by the federal government.

The Clean Air Act gives the EPA ample authority to regulate any air pollutant that threatens human health, they argue, and carbon dioxide – as the leading greenhouse gas linked to global warming – clearly fits into that category.”

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