December 28th, 2007 Frank
Carmakers aren’t happy about it, but the EU government has proposed fines on carmakers that have CO2 levels above a certain amount by 2012.
Assuming the increased costs would be passed on to consumers, reporters on BBC’s Radio 1 were asking people on the street if they would pay £1000 extra for a new car if it meant they would be more enviromentally friendly. Some people said yes but of course some people said no. I wouldn’t mind about the increased costs because I only buy used cars anyway (you know, reduce and re-use and all ;))…by the time I get one of these cars with the fine attached it’ll be at least 2018! And, you know, we’ll be getting teleported around and swimming on hoverboards and all by then.
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December 26th, 2007 Frank
I hope you had a happy Christmas! Today is Boxing Day in the UK, sort of like Thanksgiving, where the extended family traditionally gathers in one place to get all the family togetherness, drama and tension out of the way for the coming year. 
As a little ‘gift’ of sorts to subscribers and visitors to the site, I wanted to share a wonderful photo gallery from The Nature Conservancy…
The Nature Conservancy is a brilliant group - over a million members around the world and protecting thousands of rivers and millions of acres of land.
They’ve collected on their website the best pictures from their members and put them into a very touching and beautiful slideshow for people to peruse. Normally I’m not a huge fan of these slideshows, but when presented by an organization like The Nature Conservancy it’s well worth a look!
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December 24th, 2007 Frank
Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost - New York Times
As antiquated and dirty as it is, the majority of power in the world is generated by burning coal. It’s cheaper than pretty much anything else, but that is set to change with the release to market of solar panels from a tech start-up that figured out a way to ‘print’ solar panels onto sheets of plastic. They approached it from the opposite standpoint that other companies in the solar business have tried, of increasing the efficiency of the panels to get more out of each one, and simply looked at how to make the panels cheaper.
With a drastically reduced buy-in cost and no maintenance, this could lead to a huge jump in the number of solar-power applications and households using solar power. I guess with the sun planning to be around for another 5 billion or so years, we may as well get on the bandwagon of figuring out how to really make good use of its power for our homes and gadgets!
I would love to have a solar-powered house that didn’t rely on power from the public power grid!
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December 21st, 2007 Frank
How cool is this: CNET News.com reports that power stations that generate electricity from ocean waves is going to go commerical in California. California - birthplace of the hippy and home to all the wacky ideas like smog charges, increased fuel mileage requirements and the Governator.I guess when the companies involved figured that the cost of construction and maintenance will be offset by the amount of energy these wave-powered generators can create, they looked into actually making them, so good for them. Yay, the economy!
The power would cost more than coal but once manufacturing costs come down (as more of these wave buoys are built) the cost per megawatt should drop too. Sounds good to me.
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December 20th, 2007 Frank
Extremetech.com has a pretty good guide that shows how you can Recycle Your Hardware This Holiday Season. From putting together a basic computer to donate to someone (a school, charity, young family member, etc.) to looking up computer recycling in your city or assembling a home file server, it really isn’t that hard at all to ‘do the right thing’ and resist the urge to just toss everything away to head off the landfill.
Of course, I still highly recommend Freecycle.org - there’s always going to to be someone ready to pick up your old tired gadgets or computer bits!
Just something to think about after you’re done unwrapping any of those new shiny things to replace the old dull things in your life
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December 17th, 2007 Frank
The days are shorter, the nights are longer, and folks riding their bikes to and from work or shopping or from dorm to dorm need to have a light to either illuminate their way, or (more importantly) they’ll want to alert cars and trucks that they’re on the road so they’re less likely to get pitched into a hedge or a parked car. Which is bad.
So, from Instructibles, which is a pretty cool website if you’ve got a penchant for fixing things and taking them apart only to put them back together and improve them, comes this really cool modification of a standard garden solar light to function as a bike headlight. Add a clear red sheet of plastic and you could have a tail light as well.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of LED lights (as evidenced by my enthusiasm for solar Christmas LED lights) which use miniscule amounts of electricity and last forever - even the earliest LED lights on the market were advertised as lasting for 100,000 hours. I’m an even bigger fan of solar power, which delivers on the promise of ‘off the grid’ living and non-stop easy energy (combine solar and wind power and you could really just live off nothing at all). Combining LED lights and solar power is just a no-brainer to me, the ultimate combination!
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December 14th, 2007 Frank
The Times Online reports that offshore wind farms will supply half of the UK’s power
People who live along the coast won’t like the view, but apparently the coast along the North Sea is one of the best places in Europe for wind power potential. Believe it or not, the UK is very windy! It’s not something you really connect with England (think about it: did ‘Atonement’ have any windy scenes? Nope), but it’s a fact of life.
Some coal-powered stations would remain connected to the grid in the case of windless days…but really: that won’t be very often!
So it’s looking good, I think this is great news.
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December 12th, 2007 Frank
Ireland leads the way, again. The government is banning standard incandescent bulbs starting next year.
I’d heard months ago that Australia was going to do the same thing, but I guess the Irish government is the first to really go all the way.
Recall, if you will, that Ireland was the first EU country to ban smoking in pubs and restaurants, and slowly but surely other countries eventually followed suit. I think it has something to do with the bureaucracy of the larger countries, but I like to think that the other bigger, more advanced countries don’t like to be shown up and feel they HAVE to follow suit, otherwise they’ll look bad to the rest of the world.
So I guess that means the US will ban incandescents…sometime near 2020? 
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December 10th, 2007 Frank
CNN.com reports on an EcoGeek article that explains that a 2004 UK government study on Linux use can cut electronic waste figures by 50%!
How’s that work for you? A free operating system, fewer viruses, fewer attacks and fewer worms, plus it helps people recycle old computers?
Linux ain’t so bad… As more and more low-priced computers included (like the Asus eee notebook PC and the Wal-Mart desktop, which have sold out everywhere), more people will get used to using Linux and it’s possible people might eventually say ‘Internet Explorer? What’s that?’
Even the French government has switched over to Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu, both of which are free Linux systems that can do everything Windows can do for the average user.
Personally, I use Ubuntu on my home machine, except when I need to play Windows games. I’ve thought about taking in old PC’s and installing Ubuntu on them, then handing them out for free on Freecycle, but I just don’t have the room.
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December 6th, 2007 Frank
Okay…no one can argue that water isn’t a basic necessity. Anyone who’s, well…lived a couple of days that can tell you that. So why are cities like Atlanta, of all places, running out of water?
This blog post has a few ideas why.
“Lake Lanier, the reservoir supplying water to the 5 million residents of Atlanta, is rapidly draining and its supply is measured in days!”
Crikey almighty. That just ain’t good news, folks!
Some places like California and cities in Australia have enacted strict water conservation measures, and in Orange County there will be treated sewage that will be directed right back into the potable water supply, and increased awareness, enforcement and education has helped drop water usage by significant amounts in water-starved areas of Australia, but hopefully in times to come power facilities won’t have to use so much water, and people who are used to just turning things on when they want will figure out that there’s only so much they can get out of the tap.
I remember when I used to live in San Antonio that every year there’s a drought during the summer, and no one knows how big, exactly, the aquifer is that supplies the area with water. I even remember that the water people were able to measure how high above the intake pipe the water level was, and it would be measured in feet how close it was, then reported on the evening news. I don’t remember there being any laws or cutbacks on things, so back then no one was that worried about it. I wonder how it is now with the region much more populated.
Anyway, here’s how to recycle water from your sink to fill your toilet tank. Pretty sweet DIY mod!
