“Eco-driving” what is it?

In the press recently there has been a bit of discussion about “eco-driving”. What in the world is that? It is a wonderfully productive approach to driving your car that requires no investment and little training, while saving CO2 emissions, money and even lives. It may consume a little more time, but it might also lower your blood pressure.

Essentially, what you do is imagine that you need to get the absolute maximum miles out of each tank of gas. To do this, you need to be able to visualize what causes large gulps of fuel to be slurped up by your car. Guess what they are: a) jack rabbit starts, b) high speed travel, c) late up shifting, d) heavy braking at the last minute, versus gliding to a stop, e) lots of acceleration and deceleration on crowded roads, f) and long periods of engine idling.

The differences you can achieve in mileage are astounding, often as much as 40% better than otherwise. Read more

About those night lights

Most children in the ’60s and ’70s grew up having one last request after being tucked in bed at night. There were variations, but the gist of it was, “Please leave the door open just a little bit and don’t turn off the hallway light”. Within a short while, parents would turn off that light and a few hours later the house would be utterly dark except possibly for a 25 to 40 Watt lamp in some strategic location. More frugal folks enjoyed the economy and style of the 7W ping-pong ball sized light introduced by G.E. around 1966.

Fast forward to the average American home today, turn out “all the lights” and it’s not all that dark. If you haven’t noticed, try it. Most rooms will still be dimly lit by a plethora of green, blue, amber and red lights; they’re often even safe enough to walk through. Your home office or entertainment room may virtually glow. Light from a computer screen would calm the most timid child afraid of the dark. Read more

Could a rock formation help reduce global warming?

Nature Steps Up: There’s a Rock Formation That Stands Ready to Sequester Our CO2

Under the crust that wraps Earth is an 1,800-mile-deep mantle of rock. The most common rock in the mantle is called peridotite. In some spots around the globe — Oman, New Guinea, the Aegean coast, some Pacific islands, and the coast of California — the peridotite layer has found its way to the surface.
Peridotite has a curious property: when exposed to the atmosphere, it rapidly extracts and absorbs the air’s carbon dioxide. The chemical reaction locks in the CO2 and transforms the peridotite into carbonate rock. “If a leaf or a pebble falls on these rocks and you come back a few days later, it’s all covered up with carbonate,” Peter Kelemen, a geologist with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told the Natural Resources Defense Council. Read more

Maybe the answer IS blowing in the wind

The 1% Solution – Wind Power: Increasingly Viewed as “The Most Cost-Effective and Scalable” Renewable

The wind-power industry presently generates about 1% of all electricity worldwide. The wind turbines now in use have a typical capacity of around 1.5 to 2.5 megawatts, have rotor diameters as broad as 100 meters (see photo on inside page), and rotate around an area roughly the size of a football field.
Public opinion is divided about these devices. Many feel that they are majestic symbols of new energy sources; others reject them as an eyesore—a distraction from the beautiful landscape. (In consideration of this point of view, it is puzzling as to why these wind machines seem only to be manufactured in white, instead of natural colors that blend with their surroundings, which would doubtless make them far less objectionable to detractors.) The wide availability of wind power and its renewability are its most attractive attributes.

In theory, wind is so readily available throughout the world that it could meet the world’s current energy needs. Stanford University energy researchers recently found that global wind energy potential in 2000 was about 72,000 GW—almost five times world demand. Furthermore, wind technology is steadily getting less costly—from around 30 cents per kilowatt hour in the early ‘80’s to around ten cents in 2007. Read more

“What we can do” #12 from Planetwatch.org

Americans won’t be caught dead with anything less than the latest fashion in cell phones. Avidly chasing these fickle and finicky consumers, manufacturers offer almost 500 different models to choose from, with over a dozen new variants coming out every month. The result is that we throw away something like 125 million working phones annually because they look sooo last year …

Try this instead:
But maybe you didn’t just throw away those old cell phones. They might be in what the industry refers to as “the drawer” – the drawer in our house where we stick such things rather than throw them away. There’s an outfit that will do the right thing with the contents of your drawer, Collective Good in Boulder, CO, and its sister operation, Green Phone. Collective Good contributes a portion of its proceeds to whichever of 500 charities you select from which you will receive a donation acknowledgement for tax use. Green Phone buys your phone. The Staples chain is also a drop-off point for recycling. Read more

Convert your car to a hybrid?

Why not, using existing technology, convert well-functioning ICEs, including pickups, SUVs and vans (PSVs) to hybrids? Without figuring the costs of such conversions, CalCars (calcars.org), a Calfornia-based NGO, has calculated that the conversion of ICEs to hybrids or PHEVs would actually consume less energy than producing a totally new hybrid from scratch. Since the crushing and recycling of scrap metal to incorporate the materials in new cars also consumes energy, CalCars estimates that the energy footprint of a brand new hybrid would be greater than for the conversion of a used ICE. Read more

A minute of sun delivers a year of energy

One horsepower is what it takes to lift 550 lbs one foot in a second (550 ft lbs per second or 33,000 ft lbs per minute). So horsepower is a way we measure an amount of work done in a specific period of time.
Some scientist recently calculated that the sun delivers continuously to Earth Read more

A car powered by air?

For years the public has fantasized about cars that run on water. Thanks to a French invention, the future may now include cars that run on air. Read more

How Long is Your Paper Trail?

I unsubscribed to the newspaper years ago when I found myself doing most of my news reading online. My husband calls it “news snacking” Read more

Hanging my laundry outside to dry

I was raised as a child watching my mother hang clothes on the line to dry outside. Read more