Category: Environment

Floating on Water and Powered by the Wind

Technology Review has a groovy article on a new style of wind farm that floats. The idea is that people will not have their views ruined by large wind farms, and as a added bonus the wind is stronger out in the open seas.

A win for power, postcards, GE, and for fighting climate change!

“GE has announced a $27 million partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop 5-7 megawatt turbines by 2009, each of which could power well over 1,000 homes. Supplanting the company’s current 3.6 megawatt turbines, these giant energy factories should make wind power more economical, since the major cost of building and installing offshore wind farms does not depend primarily on a turbine’s size, but on the number of them that need to be erected. By 2015, GE could have even bigger, 10-megawatt turbines, according to Jim Lyons, leader of advanced technology for GE’s wind energy business.”

Help the Environment and Move to a City

Living in a city is a healthier lifestyle choice than living in SUBurban and rural areas. Some maps and analysis are available, the maps show CO2 emissions for a few American cities. The study was commissioned by Center for Neighborhood Technology.

“Our personal transportation choices can and do impact greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Households in the city have easier access to public transportation systems, drive less often or shorter distances, and walk or bike to their destinations. With continued investment in public transit and in walking- and biking-friendly neighborhoods, cities can further reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve local air quality.”

Via Tom Paine.com

Entangled Humpback Thanks Rescuers

Last December a crab fisherman working the open waters off the coast of San Francisco spotted a whale that was completely entangled in the nylon ropes that link crab pots. The whale was a female humpback nearly 50 feet in length and she had rope wrapped at least four times around her tail, the back and the left front flipper, and there was a line in her mouth. Rescuers were quickly on the scene and four divers spent about an hour cutting the nylon ropes with a special curved knife, a risky undertaking since a single flip of the gargantuan mammal’s tail could easily have killed any of them. At least 12 crab traps, weighing 90 pounds each, hung off the whale, the divers said. The combined weight was pulling the whale downward, forcing it to struggle mightily to keep its blow-hole out of the water.
Eventually they freed the humpback, a feat that a representative of the Marine Mammal Center (MMC) in Marin County described as the first successful attempt on the West Coast to free an entangled humpback.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them and pushed them gently around thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The diver who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

“It felt to me like she was thanking us, knowing that she was free and that we had helped her. She stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun. It seemed kind of affectionate, like a dog that’s happy to see you……….I never felt threatened. It was an amazing, unbelievable experience.”

Government Says Kyoto in YOUR hands now.

Not only did a single tear escape my eyes but a torrent at hearing the death of the Kyoto protocol in the Conservatives budget last night. I shed so much, doctors say I might be in a permanent state of dehydration.

But I woke up this morning with the Gatorade of new ideas and good intentions. My proposal: use your tax return to sponsor environmentally friendly initiatives and achieve your own little Kyoto. If the government kills a provided service and sponsors a tax break the shift that occurs is in the responsibility of the people to provide the service for themselves. Let me make this point perfectly clear, the CAPACITY to achieve Kyoto has not changed. In fact (in a strange way) the prospects have actually increased a little. Instead of blunderng government programs and off the mark service delivery (the government planned to buy emission credits to bail Canada out, the opposite of what a developed country was supposed to do) we now have the workings of a grass roots campaign funded by your tax return.

So invest in environmentally friendly initiatives. Use the money to buy energy effecient lights, support a wind farm, buy a solar panel, buy that fancy new bike and bike to work, take public transit (its cheaper now) and gobble up all the pollution credits you can and just hold them. This space is not the place for advertizing but I would be happy to suggest many of the excellent programs I have experience with, so please leave a comment.

I do wish to state that my proposal is mainly aimed to those of middle to higher income status who can afford such ventures. Lower income people deserve a tax break aimed directly at them and hopefully this proposal will meet the two goals of keeping Kyoto and helping to provide a government service for free that those of lower income couldnt afford.