National Geographic has an interesting article about “the amount of life you can find in one cubic foot” of various ecosystems around the world. The article itself is short on details about the method, but beautifully written. For a description of the process watch the attached videos. Hint: It’s not an instantaneous cubic foot.
A brief and interesting Google Earthy video of global ice loss.
One of the first home improvements Rachel and I made when we purchased our condo here in Cambridge this spring was a solar hot water installation on our rooftop.
The system we had put in uses vacuum tubes, a newer, more efficient type of solar collector than the black box flat panels of old. As a writer covering energy and the environment in Cambridge and China, I’d spent the past three years tracing this new and exotic technology back to the factories and cities in China where they are surprisingly commonplace.
I first read about the tubes three years ago in a story in the Boston Globe. A family in Newbury, MA was using a massive installation to provide hot water and heat for their giant barn of a house. … [view entry]
In honor of the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, I have decided to write a bit about the highly-evolved Danish wind-generation network. Danes – it’s OK if you thank me later.
The Danes generate a higher percentage of their electricity from wind than any other nation. Currently, wind supplies 20% of electricity in Denmark. Spain comes in second, and generates 12% of electricity from wind1. The U.S. generates 1% of its electricity from wind.
So what’s the deal? Why do the Danes have such a large lead in wind? There are two main reasons:
Denmark is a small, geographically homogenous country with substantial wind resources and very limited solar and hydroelectric resources.
As the video below explains, the Danes have chosen to design an electricity system that favors wind generation.
The New York times had an interesting op-ed last Monday by Paul Krugman, Cassandras of Climate Change. It contains a few quotable bits, but they’re large and the piece is short, so I’ll leave it to you dear reader to follow the link.
Krugman mentions Mr. Gore, and his film The Inconvenient Truth, which never quite seemed to live up to the hype… but I do have high hopes for The Age of Stupid, if it ever makes it into general distribution that is. To be honest though, what’s really been driving home a sense of urgency for me recently is PBS, specifically five year old re-runs of Scientific American Frontiers!
A recently aired segment in “Forever Wild?“, which I previously mentioned in passing, makes an excellent case… [view entry]
This month’s National Geographic has an excellent piece on the state and history of the Coastal Redwood Forest. If the thumbnail at right has piqued your interest, the video below briefly describes how it was made. NPR has more coverage, including a larger pic.
DUH
Although the name “The Age of Stupid” brings to mind Gary Larson’s strip “Awkard Age,” or Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy,” the film is a docu-drama about global warming. In it a mid-century man looks back and wonders why did not act more swiftly. Tomorrow is the world premiere, with a simulcast if the festivites and interviews of prominent figures, plus a showing of the film itself. Alas, it does not seem to be entering wide circulation afterwards?! Luckily, there are a number of showings in the area.
Laymen can have a tough time following complex stories such as climate change, particularly when the media and opponents characterize new findings or revisions as examples of uncertainty, rather than of science as evidence-based consensus building. This false discord is often then used to lend weight to “alternative” views. The American public is not unique in this regard, and recently Australian climate scientists have had to cope with similar issues as parliament began debating their own climate legislation.
Contributing to this problem, is a general lack of awareness of what the current state of climate research is. Models and geoclimatic records—like tree or ice cores—seem to receive the most coverage, as well as speculation based on freak weather events, even though weather… [view entry]
This comic strip yesterday:
reminded me of a wonderful, but unfortunately defunct strip, Rustle the Leaf; though I don’t know why it wasn’t “Russell the Leaf.” I really used to look forward to this every week, and was quite disappointed when it stopped updating. Included below are some of my favorite strips as a brief introduction to this little known gem, and I hope you enjoy Russell and Rooty as much as I do:
If you work with kids, or just want to enjoy some extra strips, check out their lesson plans too; especially February 2006 – Toxic Transmissions. There’s also a simple but cute animated explanation of global warming.
Still wondering just what ACES a.k.a Waxman-Markley, or “The Climate Bill,” is all about? Perhaps this brief interview with the president of the Alliance to Save Energy will help. Of course, then there’s the question of whether it’s too little too late, too much too soon, or just right? Bill Moyers’ guests this week say it’s not enough. I tend to agree, though I’m not entirely convinced it’s the false start they’d have us believe. Regardless, the summary of Waxman-Markley’s measures seems fairly moderate. Indeed, the building code changes it calls for are only slightly higher than future federal regulations!
P.S. GovTrack has some interesting tools to let you monitor the progress of bills like ACES.
