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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Shining Some Light On The Death Of Incandescent Bulbs
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on December 17, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Friday, December 17th, 2010Is the plan to do away with incandescent bulbs part of a vast energy industry conspiracy? Probably not. But that sounds a lot more interesting than “hey, get ready to change your lightbulbs in a couple years”.
  The future’s looking bright, but at a price. 33 bucks , to be more specific. |
It’s kind of interesting that many of us are not aware that there’s a massive plan underway to do away with the incandescent bulb by 2014. I say “most of us” because I’m not aware, and I say “massive plan” because there are an estimated 3 billion to 4 billion screw-in sockets in the US, accounting for about 10 percent of all US electricity consumption. According to the SYLVANIA Socket Survey, only 36 percent of Americans are aware of the planned phase out, which was legislated by the federal government in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. So what are we switching to? This Washington Post item provides a nice summary. The three main options are LED’s (only 33 bucks per bulb on Amazon!
Celling Your Soul – The Staggering Global Impact Of Cell Phones
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 4, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Saturday, December 4th, 2010Forget your CARBON footprint, what about your KARMIC footprint? We have barely begun to assess the devastating environmental, social, and ethical effects of the life cycle of mobile phones and other electronic devices that rely on rare earth minerals.
The other day a friend was rather pridefully showing off the Prius they had just bought. I thought it was pretty cool that this person (who travels quite a bit) was actually excited about getting greener. We started joking about their carbon footprint, because they fly regularly, and obviously it’s hard to offset that by simply buying a car, which we acknowledged with a little humor. But then I said “what about your karmic footprint?”, which drew a perplexed look. I explained that as cool as a Prius is regarding energy consumption, it’s loaded with electronics and rare earth metals, and its parts must be made in at least a half-dozen countries. What about the labor conditions? The fuel used for transport? The environmental impact where the rare-earth metals were mined in China? My friend is a shamelessly ruthless capitalist, and although the biggest part of my carbon footprint is probably my cigarette smoking, I’m more of a hopeful realist than a teary-eyed treehugger, so the conversation got pretty interesting after that. We shifted the focus to other products, especially electronics, and agreed at the end that there was one product that packed more evil per pound than anything else in the world of consumerism: The Cell Phone. From the beginning to the end (and perhaps especially in the middle) of its life cycle (which is far too short) the cell phone does more human harm than any product ever imagined, with the exception, of course, of those produced for the military, which are intentionally designed to cause death, destruction, and suffering. This all sounds like hyperbole, but although the hard facts about environmental impacts aren’t in – and may never be unless China stops selling us rare earth minerals and we start making the things here – some basic numbers about volume of production and consumption are available, and they’re staggering. Just look at the figures below. If there’s someone you want to kill but you find the thought of ending a human life abhorrent, get over it. The impact of your lifetime cell-phone usage will probably accomplish the same thing, but at the expense of a total stranger. Read the rest of this entry »
The Nissan iV Replaces Production Lines With Production Vines
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on November 19, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Friday, November 19th, 2010You may grow tired of looking at the swooping contours of concept cars, but with the Nissan iV the only thing you’ll grow is the car itself. It’s green because it’s made of ivy.
I think I’ve found the perfect car to drive on that solar highway that I reference whenever I can because I can’t believe it doesn’t get more press. Even if you’re into auto design, your eyes eventually grow immune to the dazzling swoopy contours of the concept cars like the ones presented at this year’s LA Auto Show . Although one assumes the designs are driven by aerodynamics, you eventually begin to feel that they’re just seeing how many swoops they can include in a design and still have it look like a car. At first glance, the Nissan iV gives the same impression, but if you look into the reasons behind the iV’s design, you find a mind-blowing futuristic functionality. Even the most sophisticated cars in production right now are still based on the basic idea of wheels on rods, with a box sitting on top. One of the most unusual design elements of the iV – the ribbon of material weaving through the wheels – is in fact brilliant functionality. You see, there’s no “hood” on this car, because there’s no engine compartment. The motors are in the wheels, freeing the design of all the additional structures necessary to hold an engine in a box and link it with a transmission, driveshaft, and gearing. But that’s just the beginning. The “biopolymer” chassis material is synthetically grown and formed from fast-growing ivy, and re-enforced with spider silk composite. Because of the lightweight yet rugged material used in the chassis, the interior (which seats four) provides a panoramic passenger experience, because it’s constructed from photovoltaic material that weighs 99% less than traditional glass. The car’s incredible range is because most of the body is a solar collector, and regenerative “super-capacitor” technology recoups 60% of the kinetic energy spent while the car is in motion. If this is the future, I’m sticking around. More images below. Read the rest of this entry »
The Glass Just Might Be Greener On The Other Side
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on November 13, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Saturday, November 13th, 2010Thanks to recent work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, someday soon even your windows may be solar collectors.
We recently touched on a brilliant idea involving turning the world’s highways into solar collectors, but what if you could turn virtually anything into a solar collector, just by covering it with a thin transparent film? That’s just one crazy idea that may soon be possible because of recent research at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Working with a semiconducting polymer spiked with Fullerenes, the scientists were able to create a thin film that is effectively transparent, could efficiently generate charge and charge separation, and is scalable to industrial production levels. Existing transparent photovoltaic materials are either slightly tinted like PVGlaze architectural glass, or only partially transparent like Taiyo See-through Solar. In the latter case because the material is created with laser etching that alternates the photovoltaic material with a truly transparent material. The real innovation with the Los Alamos project lies in the fact that the material is fabricated by creating a micron-sized flow of water droplets across a thin layer of the polymer-fullerene solution, which then evaporates, leaving a nano-scale honeycomb pattern that could efficiently absorb light and facilitate electrical conductivity. A material like this could greatly enhance ideas like this Italian greenhouse project that both grows food and collects solar power. Or imagine if the material evolved to a point where it could be applied to existing buildings without significantly changing their appearance. Although there are already a lot of strategies out there for building-integrated photovoltaics , including the possibility of photovoltaic “paint”, this new technology may make even more crazy ideas possible. Imagine if you could solarize your house just buy spraying it with a transparent film…
Gulf Oil Spill Weather Report
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 31, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Sunday, October 31st, 2010The forecast calls for widely scattered blamestorming, with high-pressure greenwashing continuing through 2050.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the only global media operation that’s covering the tragic aftermath of BP’s use of toxic dispersants is Al Jazeera. In spite of local news reports of illness from the chemicals as early as May, 2010, mainstream American media sources like MSNBC assured us back in August that the 1.8 million gallons of toxic dispersants dumped in the gulf were less toxic than the oil itself. And there’s not a lot of incentive to dig into this story, when BP and the NOAA have partnered for a propaganda campaign aimed at middle schoolers, in which they use cooking oil and detergent to show how safe the use of dispersants was. I’m no scientist, but detergent seems like a poor analogy for a chemical that causes heart trouble, organ damage, and rectal bleeding . And while major news sources like the WSJ were questioning the cleanup figures back in August, most media sources have since gone silent on the topic, except to acknowledge that Greenpeace is still looking into things. Or to talk about the Halliburton Blamestorm about the concrete used in the well. In fact, they’re telling us things are fine. Eat the fish. The fish that have been swimming in the water that just months ago would explode in the lab when tested for toxicity. Read the rest of this entry »