In spite of the promises by Detroit and the lavish spreads in Popular Mechanics, the flying car I was promised in the July 1957 is really no closer to a reality now than it was then.  Sure, there are some one off solutions, but honestly, who can afford to drive or fly something with the price of gas today?

In the 8 long years since still President Bush has been in the White House, my automobile desires have turned down a different path.  One that makes both good economic sense and good environmental sense.  For the most part, those dreams have centered around the ‘Smart Car’ type of vehicle. 

Small, urban and with great fuel economy, the only detracting factor has been the long distance potential of these vehicles.  In short, there is non long distance potential.  If I owned one of these as my only vehicle and wanted to visit my sister in Portland I would have to consider alternative transportation methods.  Train, bus or maybe even a rental car.  Not the best of choices as far as I’m concerned.

But now, the story is a little different.  Volkswagen AG is announced the forthcoming production of a diesel-electric hybrid that promises almost 70 miles to the gallon.  That was not a typo – 70 miles to the gallon.  Just where do I sign??

Coming Soon from VW: A 69.9 MPG Diesel Hybrid

By Chuck Squatriglia

It’s official – Volkswagen is unveiling a hybrid to challenge the mighty Toyota Prius. And not just any hybrid, but a diesel-electric hybrid it says will deliver 69.9 mpg.

VW’s been experimenting with hybrids of the gasoline-electric variety since the early 1990s, but the Golf hybrid it will unveil next month at the Geneva Motor Show is the first production model the German company’s rolled out. Volkswagen isn’t offering much in the way of details, but the car is expected to have a  parallel hybrid drivetrain with a 2.0 liter engine. Look for it to have an all-electric mode at low speed, start-stop capability, regenerative braking and a 7-speed DSG double-clutch transmission, according to Auto Express and AutoBlog Green.

What’s all the techno-jargon mean? The Golf Hybrid will get almost 70 mph mpg (ed. note: D’oh!) while meeting Europe’s stringent Euro V and America’s Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standards, making it green enough even for California. The car is said to emit just 89 g/km of CO2. (For comparison, the Prius emits 104 g/km and Honda Civic Hybrid emits 116.)

The hybrid Golf may be just the start.

According to Britain’s Channel 4, VW is considering the hybrid drivetrain in a Jetta and Audi A3. DailyTech says it also could appear in the VW Tiguan and Audi Q5 crossover utility  vehicles.

Auto Express says the Golf hybrid will be offered for sale in Europe by the end of next year. No word yet on when we might see it on this side of the pond. VW hasn’t released a picture of the hybrid, so we’re offering a shot of its diesel Golf Bluemotion.

[Thanks, Wired]

Amazon.com is headquartered in Seattle, Washington; that high tech, granola crunchy capitol of America.

Recently Amazon has proven to be a concerned environmental citizen as well as being a totally awesome on-line retailer.  Starting with 19 best-selling products from leading manufacturers including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend, Amazon is introducing Frustration-Free Packaging.

The end of the clamshell is neigh!  With these first 19 items, Amazon has done away with the packaging and will send you just the product.  Pretty sweet, don’t you think?

But the environmental benefit doesn’t end there.  You’ll receive your item in a much smaller recyclable cardboard package which use less material.  So, the positive environmental impact is seen across the board with the elimination of clamshell and twist-tie packaging and the reduction in the size of the cardboard box you’ll receive in the mail.

Very Sweet!!!!!

Amazon.com Frustration Free Packaging

Amazon.com has launched “Frustration-Free Packaging,” a new initiative designed to make packaging both more user and environmentally friendly. 

The company’s initiative is unique in that it puts the interests of its customers first not packaging.  Due to the fact Amazon’s business is solely online based this new packaging concept is possible.

Amazon is focusing first on two kinds of items: those enclosed in hard plastic cases known as “clamshells” and those secured with plastic-coated wire ties, commonly used in toy packaging.

Frustration-Free Packaging is being launched in the U.S. with 19 bestselling products from leading manufacturers including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and electronics manufacturer Transcend. The product is exactly the same – Amazon has just streamlined the packaging.

In addition to making packages easier to open, a major goal of the Frustration-Free Packaging initiative is to be more environmentally friendly by using less packaging material.

One of the first products to launch with Frustration-Free Packaging is the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship, which is now delivered in an easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard box.

The new packaging eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts and 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials.  Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners.

Small items, such as memory cards, are also good candidates for Frustration-Free Packaging. Typically encased in oversized plastic clamshells to deter shoplifting, memory cards are then placed inside larger cardboard boxes for shipment to customers.

Working with Transcend, Amazon has eliminated the hard-to-open clamshell and the need for an additional box. Instead, the cards will now ship inside recyclable cardboard envelopes which use less material.

Amazon’s new "Frustration-Free Packaging" plan comes as a Sustainable is Good reader in the UK sent us images of excessive packaging from Amazon UK from an order she placed for an Apple Macbook adapter.  Excessive packaging is an issue we’ve covered extensively including a number of examples from Amazon.com. 

Amazon’s new packaging plan is excellent news for both consumers and those concerned about excessive packaging.  Hopefully the company will expand the plan to more of their products in the near future. 

You can order select items from Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend in the new Frustration-Free Packaging for immediate delivery on Amazon.com.

[Thanks, Sustainable is Good]

While browsing on the Interwebs today I found this article that discusses 6 technologies that don’t know they are dead.  And the first one I saw, the phonebook, has been a thorn in my side now for so many years I just had to post it.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I used a physical phonebook.  Really, I’m not just being dramatic.  We’ve had broadband Internet for at least 6 years, so it’s been at least that much time.

So, for at least six years I’ve been stumbling over three separate SERIES of phonebooks on my front porch each year.  You’ve got your Dex, your Quest publication and your ‘Real’ Yellow Pages (whatever the heck that means).  So, three times a year I dump the phonebooks into the recycle bin and felt abused for a couple of days.  Abused because of the tree that had to die so that a #13.9 billion dollar industry could stay alive.  What a waste.

Slate has a nice article about the senseless and archaic icons of the 1960’s and ’70’s ‘reach out and touch someone’ campaign.  But right now I’m more interested in the 6 Technologies that just won’t die.

Tech Zombies: 6 Technologies That Don’t Know They’re Dead

By CRACKED Staff, Luke McKinney

#6. Phone Books

An incredible 615 million phone books were printed last year, most of which were used to replace missing legs on sofas or were ripped apart in Youtube videos.

About another million tons of these useless blocks will be shipped out to households and offices next year, where an increasing number will make a U Turn at the front porch and head to the landfill without ever being opened. William Rathke, an anthropologist who studies garbage, says you can "dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake." Rathke, who despite digging through trash for a living has his Ph.D. from Harvard, claims phone books account for about 10-30% of the trash at your local dump.

In an era when you can fit many gigabytes onto a device small enough to be swallowed by a cat and even your local bait shop has a website, phone companies still want us to find phone numbers the same way we did 100 years ago: by dragging out a bulky, ten-pound list printed on dead trees.

Why are they still around?
Since you’ve probably never opened one, you may not realize that phone books are chock full of so many ads that they generated $13.9 billion last year. That sort of makes sense when you realize these ads are being force fed to every single household in America, like giant bricks of spam just appearing on your porch once a year. The only difference is you can click out of a pop up ad. Phone books weigh 10 lbs and have to be disposed of in special ways, to avoid becoming even more than 30% of your local landfill. Yes, it would appear that Satan works in advertising, and he’s damn good at what he does.

But even though it reaches twice as many homes as the Super Bowl, does it get past the doorstep of those homes anymore? Are there really $13.9 billion worth of people using them? Well yes, if you believe the phone companies, and the people they’ve paid to conduct surveys. And in an industry with no sales figures (because nobody asked for the damn things in the first place) how else are you going to track who actually uses them?

Well there is one way. You could go hunting around in landfills to see if the phone books were thrown away all at once right when everyone got them, creating entire layers of phone book in the earth. You know, like a cake? But who’s bat shit crazy enough to do something like that?

[Thanks, Cracked.com]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out against the energy policy of presidential candidate John McCain.  Criticizing the much ridiculed proposal to lift the ban on off-shore oil drilling, Arnold has made no secret of his disdain for the proposal – even with Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a supporter of the proposal within earshot.

Arnold has a long history of directing legislation that benefits the environment and reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the State of California.  With the exception of killing off General Motors EV1, the first mass produced electric car, the California Air Resources Board has been aggressive in it’s policies toward the environment. 

In fact, CARB’s most recent plan which calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30%, is far and away the most aggressive piece of legislature to date.  CARB’s only real failing is not seeking to be more aggressive in it’s refusal to allow American automakers to waste more time and money on the fuel cell scheme.

Schwarzenegger criticizes McCain’s offshore drilling proposal

At a Florida conference on global warming, California’s governor says drilling will not bring down oil prices, and he urges consumers to use more renewable resources.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:47 PM PDT, June 26, 2008

MIAMI — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a veiled swipe at Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Thursday when he said at a climate conference here that anyone suggesting offshore oil drilling could bring down gas prices was "blowing smoke."

The remark was also a dig at his host, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who riled environmentalists, tourism promoters and the state’s political leaders on both sides of the aisle last week when he voiced support for McCain’s proposal to lift bans on exploring for oil off the coasts of California, Florida and the Eastern Seaboard.

McCain and Crist, whom the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is rumored to be considering as his running mate, have come in for heavy criticism for backing exploration that many Floridians and Californians fear could pollute the coastal playgrounds that are vital to their states’ tourism-dependent economies.

Crist, who thrilled environmentalists Tuesday with the announcement of a major land purchase to speed restoration of the Everglades, has since modified his stance on offshore drilling to say he would support it only if guarantees were in place that no environmental harm would result.

From his podium at the conference, Schwarzenegger said, "Politicians have been throwing around all kinds of ideas in response to the skyrocketing energy prices, from the rethinking of nuclear power to pushing biofuels and more renewables and ending the ban on offshore drilling," Schwarzenegger said. "But anyone who tells you this would bring down gas prices any time soon is blowing smoke."

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear later contacted The Times and other news media to say the governor’s remarks were not aimed at McCain or Crist.
The Austrian-born governor also chastised U.S. energy consumers for lagging behind those in his state and Europe in using renewable resources and likened the challenge of combating global warming to defeating communism and putting a man on the moon.

Schwarzenegger also touted California’s leading role in the green revolution, repeating pledges to have the state using renewable sources for a third of its electrical generation by 2020 and to have 7 million more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road by then.

The skyrocketing cost of America’s "oil addiction" threatens the nation’s energy security and its image in the world as an innovative leader in science and engineering, he told Crist’s second annual forum aimed at bringing the fight against climate change down to the grass-roots level.

"Working together we can create a comprehensive, innovative energy policy that helps consumers, protects our planet and builds a stronger and more secure America," Schwarzenegger said. "We can make America No. 1 in fighting global warming."

Schwarzenegger hailed his state’s landmark global warming law as a blueprint for the country to follow and urged the federal government to "get on board." He called it "shameful" that the United States as a whole gets less than 2% of its energy from renewable sources, compared to 12% in California.

Denmark gets 20% of its power from wind turbines and Germany and Brazil lead respectively in the development of solar power and ethanol, the governor noted.
"I want America to be No. 1. America can and should do better," Schwarzenegger vowed.

Washington has been "unwilling to hold automakers’ or oil companies’ feet to the fire" to get them to build more fuel-efficient cars and find less-polluting substances to power them, he said, noting that the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. gets less than 25 mpg.

"The Model T did better than that," Schwarzenegger said. "But since the Model T disappeared, America summoned the political will to put a man on the moon, end legal discrimination and bring down the Berlin Wall."

He said "big science, big technology and smart policies will help America reach its rightful place in the world."

Both governors appealed to those with the real power to make change — average citizens — to drive slower, keep engines tuned and tires properly inflated, to buy hybrids and lower overall consumption.

"We all do have the power. Let’s not wait for government," Schwarzenegger concluded. "Energy prices are not going back to the good old days."

Florida and California have some things in common, he said playfully:
"We each have a governor that is nice and tanned. Each has a governor that can rip off his clothes and look great in a swimsuit on the beach. And each of us has a governor who can run as vice president."

[Thanks, LA Times]

It seems like Still President (S.P.) Bush is about to go against the long held position on federal bans in off shore oil exploration and drilling.  With gasoline exceeding $4.00 a gallon, both S.P. Bush and his clone John McCain have declared in recent speeches that the time has come to destroy our ecology end the ban.

S.P. Bush has also come out in favor of ending the ban on oil shale drilling and opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.  All of these measures may just be due to the skyrocketing price of oil or they may have to do with Bush’s associations with Harken Energy Corporation.  My guess is the latter because S.P. Bush has never shown any altruistic tendencies before.

Bush also emphasized the need for the United States to expand its refining capacity and said he was proposing measures to speed federal approval of refinery building permits.  And again, will the Harken Energy Corporation have anything to do with the refineries?

Bush Will Seek to End Offshore Oil Drilling Ban

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: June 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush, reversing a longstanding position, will call on Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling, according to White House officials who say Mr. Bush now wants to work with states to determine where drilling should occur.

The move underscores how $4-a-gallon gas has become a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it comes as a growing number of Republicans are lining up in opposition to the federal ban.

The party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, used a speech in Houston on Tuesday to say he now favors offshore drilling, an announcement that infuriated environmentalists who have long viewed him as an ally. Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, a Republican, immediately joined Mr. McCain, saying he, too, now wants an end to the ban.

Even before the disclosure of Mr. Bush’s decision, the drilling issue caused a heated back-and-forth on the campaign trail on Tuesday, as Mr. McCain sought to straddle the divide between environmentalists and the energy industry, while facing accusations from his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, that he had flip-flopped and capitulated to the oil industry.

In Washington, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said Mr. Bush would urge Congress to “pass legislation lifting the Congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling,” adding, “The president believes Congress shouldn’t waste any more time.”

[Thanks, NY Times]

John Mashek, a retired political journalist and part time teacher has a Blog over at U.S. News and World Report where he is busy commenting on politics. He posted some thoughts yesterday that struck a chord in my battle weary heart. He was referring to the Mukasey confirmation votes by Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and how there may have been a measure of sobering reality in their decision.

Would the petulant Bushie Boy have offered up anyone better if Mukasey hadn’t been approved? I think not. In fact, the childish response that many people seem to think would have been the result might have given us a choice that was actually worse than Alberto! Yes, it is possible to have someone worse than ’Berto, but that level of incompetence boggles my mind and gives me headaches.

So, the conclusion that Mashek comes to is that Mukasey and his history of fairness on the bench are the absolute best the Justice Department could have hoped for considering the circumstances.

I personally think that sucks. Why is it that we have to ’settle’ in a situation like this? Why do we have to settle at all?

Liberals: Give Mukasey a Chance

November 15, 2007 12:22 PM ET | Mashek, John

There are times when liberals need to be scolded. The confirmation process of Attorney General Michael Mukasey is one of those times.

Right-wing conservatives are often holier-than-thou and all-or-nothing partisans. Some liberal critics of Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California fit that profile regarding Mukasey.

The two, as members of the Judiciary Committee, voted to confirm Mukasey, thus assuring his confirmation by the full Senate.

The critics, mostly outside the hallowed walls of the Senate, jumped all over the two senators. It was not their finest day in op-eds and blogs.

A former federal judge with a reputation for fairness, Mukasey was breezing to confirmation until he was asked about waterboarding as a form of torture. Mukasey hedged. He ripped the practice but avoided labeling it torture, possibly because of legal culpability.

You would think that he had gone around the bend. Here is a reasonable successor to the totally incompetent Alberto "I Don’t Recall" Gonzales, and some senators balked. Waterboarding of prisoners is wrong, but it should not have been used as the sole excuse for defeating Mukasey’s nomination.

Did the opposition think the president would name a better man or woman than Mukasey? Given Bush’s usual temperament, the next nominee would really be flawed.

On the Senate floor, Mukasey garnered little support from Democrats, some of them apparently cowed by the piling-on of Mukasey.

Mukasey will be in office for 14 months. The Justice Department is a shambles and low on morale after the miserable tenure of the president’s Texas buddy Gonzales.

I’ll wager that some Democrats, at the end of Bush’s term in January 2009, will say that Mukasey was all right under the circumstances.

Ben Popken over at The Consumerist just posted about a new service called Catalog Choice, an Opt-Out service for those nasty and unwanted catalogs you get in the mail all the time. Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center whose mission is is to reduce the number unsolicited catalog mailings. Sounds good to me! I’ve already joined and added three catalogs to my list!

Now if someone could start a service like this to get off the mailing lists of Clearwire and the 47 versions of the yellow pages we get.

"If you build it, they will come." That line caused Kevin Costner to plow under some corn and build a ball field out in the Great American Heartland. But that was 18 years ago and the times have changed. All Kevin could look forward to if he built that ball field today is heat stroke and sunburns.

According to Julie Gerberding, CDC Director, "populations in Midwestern and Northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity, and duration." That line was part of a recent presentation made in front of the U.S. Senate that was redacted from the original 12 page document by White House censors. In fact, the original 12 pages became only 6 by the time the environmental ostriches were done with Dr. Gerberding’s report.

This is just one in a long list of edits which ignore Al Gore’s "Inconvenient Truth" and focus on allowing the American lawmakers and public access to only the information which is in line with the White House’s flawed official policy. If George ’Dumbya’ Bush doesn’t believe it’s true, then by God people in his employ are not going to contradict him in public.

Now with 50 percent less truth

October 29, 2007

WHEN THE top public health official of the United States addressed the Senate last Tuesday on the health impact of global warming in this country, the senators – and the public – had a right to expect Julie Gerberding’s full, unvarnished thoughts on this important issue. That’s not what they got. In another case of the White House censoring what the public learns about climate change, the administration cut her testimony in half.

As a result, Gerberding, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not tell senators, as she had planned to, that "the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed." Nor did the senators learn that areas in the northern part of the country "will likely bear the brunt of increases in ground-level ozone and associated airborne pollutants. Populations in Midwestern and Northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity, and duration."

All of that information was included in the six pages stricken from Gerberding’s original draft of 12 pages. The White House says it made the deletions because the information "didn’t align" with a report this year from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In response, Senator Barbara Boxer of California released a comparison of the UN report and phrases stricken from the Gerberding draft. Both raise the threat of heat stress on vulnerable populations, increased respiratory diseases, and more waterborne infectious diseases.

This is not the first time the White House has muzzled government researchers who have raised concerns about global warming or pointed the way to addressing it. After NASA scientist James E. Hansen said in 2005 that greenhouse gas emissions were creating "a different planet," his superiors tried to control his appearances and limit his interviews.

In 2002, the White House made the Environmental Protection Agency drop a chapter on the risks of climate change from an annual EPA report that for six years had included such information. In 2003, the EPA did its best to bury an analysis by staff members showing that a proposal to cap carbon dioxide emissions by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman would not seriously damage the economy.

Recently, the Bush administration has been more willing to acknowledge the role of manmade emissions in the warming of the planet, while still shrinking from mandatory actions to deal with the problem. By watering down the views of a top official like Gerberding, the White House hopes to reduce pressure in the public and Congress for a carbon cap or tax that would force limits on emissions. But this is a case of what we don’t know can hurt us. The Senate should bring Gerberding back to give her full testimony.

[Thanks, Boston.com]

Additional Resources:

• Administration’s facts about global warming melting away @ dailyiowan.com
• (Still) Muzzling the Climate Scientists @ NYTimes.com
• Mass extinction? Just ignore it @ Cincinnati Post
• Censoring science @ The Houston Chronicle

In 1988, a scientist in the employ of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), testified before Congress and stated that he was 99% sure that Global Warming was here. That statement, made by James Hansen, has been subjected to enormous worldwide scrutiny ever since.

In the 19 years since then, has there been any indication that Mr. Hansen was fundamentally wrong with his assessment? Or, have recent warming trends shown us the error of our ways.

Al Gore’s conviction that something is amiss won him the spotlight and the prize at the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Awards as he shared the honors with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). How right is he?

In a high court ruling in the UK school teachers are allowed to show the film, but only after discussing some inconvenient untruths contained in the documentary. The high court does agree that Mr Gore’s film was “broadly accurate” in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.

A recent Seattle PI article suggests that the walrus population in Alaska could face hardships because the ice pack is so thin it makes travel to their traditional feeding ground almost impossible. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified a warming climate, and the resulting melting of sea ice, as the reason polar bears may be threatened as a species.

But in a more recent article, the NY times reports that the Great Lakes are shrinking. That seems at odds with the hundreds of scientist worldwide who talk about the shrinking polar ice caps.

So, as a firm believer in global warming and a belief in the fact that it’s due almost entirely to OUR misuse of the earths natural resources I wonder why an article like that might have been printed a week after the Nobel Award ceremonies.

There are many things that affect our environment, from global warming to the overgrazing of our pastures and prairies.  There are so many inter-connected variables that it’s hard to keep track.

Thankfully, someone over at Wikipedia is keeping track for me.  There are three great lists that bring some of the issues into clearer light and illuminate some issues for the first time (at least for me).  I mean, I never realized that there were environmental impacts to nanotechnology.  Be that as it may, here are the lists in question:

1. List of environmental issues
2. List of environment topics
3. List of conservation topics

So, let’s all pick something, that one thing, that we CAN do for our environment, our futures, our lives and let’s try to make a change.

I know, it’s not always easy to be environmentally conscious. So many things can get in the way. Just trying to keep even with the world we’ve created, let alone get ahead, can take up more time than seems reasonable in many cases.

But there are a few things that even the most harried one of us can do that will make a significant impact on our future environment. And the easiest of these (in my humble opinion) is the CFL or Compact Fluorescent Lamp By simply replacing one incandescent bulb in your home you can save over US$30 in electricity costs over the lamp’s lifetime compared to an incandescent lamp and save 2000 times their own weight in greenhouse gases.

With the current technology you can use a CFL in almost any light fixture in your home. That wasn’t the case even 3 years ago, but as consumers demand the technology the size of the bulb continues to shrink. Brooke and I use these in the basement and other areas where the quality and color of the light doesn’t cause us unnecessary eyestrain when (and where) we read. I feel confident that even this restriction will pass as the technology matures.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a West Coast energy provider, recently announced an exciting CFL giveaway as a part of their involvement with the National Energy Awareness Month. PG&E plans on giving away 1,000,000 (one MILLION) CFLs during the month of October as part of a larger campaign to raise awareness of the need to recycle fluorescent lamps. There is an article HERE that describes the program.

I’ve also attached a PDF from the EPA which describes how to recycle a CFL as well as how to clean up the mess if you’ve accidentally broken one. EPA CFL Recycle & Cleanup Document

My favorite on-line retailer sells CFLs on the cheap here -> Amazon CFL Bargain

Today is Blog Action Day. An initiative to bind the blogging community together for one day on one topic. Today thousands of bloggers will post articles that relate to environmental issues in an effort to get people talking about a better future not only for ourselves, but for our children and our children’s children.

I had been planning to spend yesterday writing an article or two that I could post during the course of today. But the best laid plans of mice and men…. I woke up yesterday sporting a 101.3 degree fever and basically spent the day lying in bed snoozing and drinking Gatorade (thanks Kel!) so I have nothing prepared.

What I will do today is try to cobble together an article or two that refer to my original ideas for today.

One of my favorite game franchises, SimCity, has added a module which takes into account the effects of carbon dioxide. Building a city and ignoring the issue will lead to elevated levels of greenhouse gasses and your carefully laid out cities will start to die off.

Players can take the path less chosen and build cities ’greener’, thus avoiding the hazards, but the only green choices you get in the game are BP Alternative energy options. Be that as it may, this may be a great primer for our politicians to use to get a grip on how ineffective legislation and poor planning have caused the problem and how this problem might be fixed with stricter legislation.

Although this seems more like a showcase for BP and their low-carbon technologies, this is the first game that I can recall that takes pollution in any form into account.

SimCity adds global warming to the mix
Posted by Cory Doctorow, October 11, 2007 2:40 AM

SimCity Societies — the forthcoming installment in the classic urban simulation franchise — will include a global warming variable. If your SimSocieties aren’t carefully balanced, they’ll swamp their environments with greenhouse gasses and die off. The module is produced with BP, who, I guess, are trying to figure out what a giant oil company does next.

The game does not force players to power their cities any specific way, but allows them to make choices, each of which come with advantages and disadvantages. Similar to real-life, the least expensive and most readily-available buildings in SimCity Societies are also the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, an invisible gas that contributes to global warming. Should players choose to build cities dependent on these types of sources for power to conserve their in-game money, their carbon ratings will rise and, at reaching critical levels, the game will issue alerts about the threat of the various natural disasters like droughts, heat waves and others that may strike their cities.

Alternatively, players can strive to create a greener environment and avoid hazards caused by excessive carbon emissions by choosing from a variety of BP Alternative Energy low-carbon power options. Using hydrogen and natural gas plants to wind farms and solar power, SimCity Societies encourages people to learn about some of the causes and consequences of global warming in an engaging, educational and meaningful way. While these power sources maintain nearby property values and keep the cities’ citizens safer from disaster, they also mimic real-life in that they cost players more of their funds, and do not produce as much power as less green options that take up similar space. Informative real-world snippets about power production and conservation will also be available in-game, informing players of global warming issues both virtually and in reality.

[Thanks, BoingBoing]

Monday of last week I mentioned in my News You Can Use segment that a study by Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, and Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology was published which indicates that Twice as many storms had formed each year from 1995 to 2005. Well, today NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that there is an 85% chance that there will be an "above- normal season".

US forecasts above-normal 2007 hurricane season

Aug 9, 2007, 14:27 GMT

Washington – US scientists Thursday forecast a worse-than- usual 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, including three to five major storms.

US government forecasters see an 85-per-cent chance of an ’above- normal season,’ with 13-16 named storms and seven to nine hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

A normal year brings six hurricanes, including two major ones, the agency said.

Since the season began June 1, there have been three Atlantic named storms, slightly above average, NOAA said. The hurricane season peaks in August through October and ends November 30.

The latest update was largely in line with NOAA’s initial 2007 forecast in May.

’The development of key climate factors through early August has increased the confidence of an above-normal season,’ the agency said Thursday.

[Thanks, M&C]

As my Mother, Aunt and Uncle still live in South Florida, I’ll be watching the storms closely this year.

An article on Information Week gives hope to Vonage customers everywhere. "We have substantially completed the deployment of workarounds for the two name translation patents and have completed the development of the wireless patent workaround," said Vonage chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Citron, in an e-mail message. "This is a significant step toward moving ahead with our business in the wake of the Verizon litigation."

Vonage also reported that revenue for the second quarter jumped 43% to $206 million while its adjusted loss from operations narrowed to $18 million from $60 million a year ago.

Vonage Cuts Losses, Develops ’Workarounds’ To Counter Verizon Patents

By W. David Gardner

InformationWeek
August 9, 2007 10:49 AM

Vonage Holdings reported Thursday that it has developed "workarounds" to key Verizon Communications(VZ) patents that were at the heart of potentially devastating litigation that the start-up VoIP firm lost to Verizon.

Also Thursday, Vonage reported that its revenue for the second quarter jumped 43% to $206 million while its adjusted loss from operations narrowed to $18 million from $60 million in the second quarter a year ago.

Previously, Vonage had been pessimistic about its chances of developing ways of overriding the offending patents so it could continue providing its service.

"We have substantially completed the deployment of workarounds for the two name translation patents and have completed the development of the wireless patent workaround," said Vonage chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Citron, in an e-mail message. "This is a significant step toward moving ahead with our business in the wake of the Verizon litigation."

Vonage, which had maintained that Verizon was seeking to put it out of business, fought an injunction that sought to limit its business to calls between its customers. Vonage, however, won the right to continue in business, although at a greatly reduced manner.

The VoIP company reported only 57,000 net subscriber line additions. Vonage, which offers several VoIP calling plans, said it finished the quarter with 2.45 million lines. A typical calling plan costs about $25 a month.

Vonage said it picked up some SunRocket subscribers, who were left without service a few weeks ago when the VoIP firm suddenly ceased operations.

[Thanks, Information Week]

Twice as many Atlantic hurricanes formed each year from 1995 to 2005, on average, than formed during parallel years a century ago finds a new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic. The researchers conclude that warmer sea surface temperatures and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change are responsible for the increase. [Link]

If I had to sum up the latest game announcement from the Lucas Arts world in three words they would have to be ‘pure, unadulterated, awesome.’ Basically, the principle, in my mind, runs that Lego is fantastic, Lego Star Wars I and II were brilliant and the Indiana Jones films were astoundingly good. Therefore a combination of the two should amount to nothing short of perfection. [Link]

"DeLorean Motor Company, a suburban Houston company that rebuilds DeLoreans, is laying plans to bring the car back into limited production. The last DeLorean rolled off the assembly line in Northern Ireland in 1982. But like Duran Duran, the Rubik’s Cube and other Reagan-era icons, the car retains a following. Of the 9,000 built in 1981 and 1982, about 6,500 are still on the road, according to James Espey, vice president of DeLorean Motor." [Link]

Belfast – After 38 years of conflict and the loss of more than 3,500 lives, a further milestone will be marked in Northern Ireland’s history this week with the official end of British army operations in the province. [Link] (p.s. Listen up BUSH – Peace is possible even in the worst of religious battle-zones {more on this later})

Alberto Gonzales’s apparent willingness to dissemble in order to protect himself or President Bush stretches back to at least 1996, when he intervened to prevent then-Gov. Bush from serving jury duty in Texas, the Post notes. Not until its second-to-last paragraph, however, does the Post article remind readers that by not serving jury duty in the drunken driving case Bush was able to keep his own drunken driving conviction a secret for several more years. [Link]

A total of 925,986 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 573,397 properties nationwide during the first six months of the year, up more than 30 percent from the previous six-month period and up more than 55 percent from the first six months of 2006, according to figures compiled by
RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine-based foreclosure information company. [Link]

Time Magazine, Why Ingmar Bergman Mattered. The Colbert Report has an occasional segment called "Cheating Death," which is introduced by the image of Stephen facing the hooded figure of Death over a chessboard. That’s a reference to the 1957 film The Seventh Seal, a medieval morality play written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Colbert, who switches chess pieces while Death is distracted, parodies the role of a knight (Max von Sydow) who puts his soul on the line to save a few lives during a season of plague. [Link]

Rent-A-Goat

I think it was my sister Erin who mentioned to me a couple of years ago that she wanted to start (or maybe just find) a rent-a-goat business. The idea was that since they’ll eat just about anything you could use them for brush clearing, lawn mowing, etc. It appears that someone here in Seattle has beat her to the punch! Check out this Seattle P.I. article:

Rent-a-goats gain foothold

Critters grow popular in city as cheap, chemical-free way to clear vegetation

In 24 hours, the goats reduced a bed of ivy to a mat of bare vines. They riddled the once-imposing blackberry thicket with tunnels.

In less than four days, the invasive plants would be vanquished, allowing sunlight to stream through the vacant lot next to the King County Metro bus depot in Bellevue.

With their four-chambered stomachs and insatiable desire to nibble on anything even resembling a plant, goats have gained credibility as land clearers among Seattle-area government agencies and private developers.

“Getting them to accept it is always the hardest part,” said Craig Madsen, an Eastern Washington rancher who’s part of the urban trend. His rentable herd of 270 Boer and Spanish goats has never been more in demand.

Skeptics, he’s found, quickly become converts. Once the hooves hit the ground, few can question the tenacity of these ruminants to devour unwanted foliage.

[Thanks, Seattle P.I.]