`Strange though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food. For while heating food requires more than 100 times as much power as running the clock, most microwave ovens stand idle—in “standby” mode—more than 99% of the time. And they are not alone: many other devices, such as televisions, DVD players, stereos and computers also spend much of their lives in standby mode, collectively consuming a huge amount of energy. Moves are being made around the world to reduce this unnecessary power consumption, called “standby power”.
[..] In 1998 they released an initial study which estimated that standby power accounted for approximately 5% of total residential electricity consumption in America, “adding up to more than $3 billion in annual energy costs”. According to America’s Department of Energy, national residential electricity consumption in 2004 was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh)—5% of which is 64m MWh. The wasted energy, in other words, is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations.’
`Bruce Crower has made a name for himself with his aftermarket performance parts business Crower Cams, but at 75 years old Crower may have done the most remarkable thing in his life. Crower has developed a six-stroke engine that may just forever change the automotive world.
Using a modified single-cylinder diesel engine Crower converted it to use gasoline, then machined the necessary parts to create the worlds only six-stroke engine. The engine works through harnessing wasted heat energy created by the fuel combustion to add another two-strokes to the engine cycle. After the combustion stage water is injected into the super heated cylinder and steam forms forcing the piston back down and in turn cools the engine. The result is normal levels of power using much less fuel and no need for an external cooling system.’
`Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.”
In a press release for the survey, NASA directly tied the changes to warming and described the survey as “the most comprehensive” ever in both regions. [..]
“If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically,” he said in the press release last Wednesday. “The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century.”’
`A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal “Science First Hand”. The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface.’
`As hybrid sales skyrocket, there’s a growing concern that the battery-gas powered vehicles pose a risk because they aren’t as noisy as gas-powered engines. When idling, hybrids run on the quiet electric battery. Most, with the exception of GM and Honda hybrids, can also operate on the battery until the car reaches higher speeds, when the gas engine kicks in.
What follows is silence at locations where drivers are likely to tangle with pedestrians and bicyclists — crosswalks, turning lanes and parking lots.
In Sant’Anna’s case, an elderly man enjoying a morning walk didn’t hear her coming as she backed into the street. She lunged for the brake, stopping just short of hitting him.’
`Scientists in energy-poor Japan said Friday they have found a new source of gasoline — cattle dung.
Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, said his team has successfully extracted .042 ounces of gasoline from every 3.5 ounces of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.
“The new technology will be a boon for livestock breeders” to reduce the burden of disposing of large amounts of waste, Shibusawa said. About 551,155 tons of cattle dung are produced each year in Japan, he said.’
`The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the companies that use perfluorooctanoic acid, an ingredient in Teflon, will cut the chemical’s use.
PFOA or its related chemicals, used in nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing and food packaging doesn’t break down in the environment and has been found in low levels in the blood of some 90 percent of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The EPA hasn’t established safe levels of PFOA exposure, but an independent panel recommended in February that the agency classify PFOA as a “likely” carcinogen, while the EPA develops a final risk assessment of the chemical.’
follow up to Teflon’s sticky situation.
`Even as Congolese villagers devise novel ways to snare the fast-disappearing bonobo, scientists are racing to save the gentle “hippie chimp” from extinction.
The bonobo, or pan paniscus, is closely related to man and known for resolving squabbles through sex rather than violence. It’s also prized by some Congolese for its tasty meat. The wiry, wizened-faced chimps are being killed in treetop nests in Congo’s vast rain forest, their only natural habitat in the world, by villagers who do not seem to know how fast their prey is disappearing. [..]
Bonobos are most easily captured when asleep drunk, say poachers in Congo’s Equator province who intoxicate the chimps with bottled beer and palm wine before tying them into bags for local meat markets.’
`This summer a Gristedes store on Roosevelt Island in New York will get half of its power from six tide-powered turbines in the East River. Unlike dam-based hydroelectric generators, which depend on rain or snowpack to keep current flowing and which shut down during droughts, newer “hydro- kinetic” systems exploit less capricious natural forces. “Lunar power” is the term offered by experts such as George Hagerman, a senior research associate at Virginia Tech and co-author of a recent EPRI marine-energy study. “You can’t know if the wind will be up in an hour,” he says, “but you can predict the tide 1,000 years from now.” “It’s local, reliable, renewable, and clean. Plus, it’s out of sight,” says Trey Taylor, president of Verdant Power LLC, the Arlington (Va.) startup developing the East River site.’
`A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver’s interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No — just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School
The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year — rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren’t exactly the cream of the academic crop.’
`Europe’s “Little Ice Age” may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.
Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says.
The Little Ice Age was a period of some 300 years when Europe experienced a dip in average temperatures.’
`Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have engineered a strain of pond scum that could, with further refinements, produce vast amounts of hydrogen through photosynthesis.
The work, led by plant physiologist Tasios Melis, is so far unpublished. But if it proves correct, it would mean a major breakthrough in using algae as an industrial factory, not only for hydrogen, but for a wide range of products, from biodiesel to cosmetics.
The new strain of algae, known as C. reinhardtii, has truncated chlorophyll antennae within the chloroplasts of the cells, which serves to increase the organism’s energy efficiency. In addition, it makes the algae a lighter shade of green, which in turn allows more sunlight deeper into an algal culture and therefore allows more cells to photosynthesize.’
`Several months ago at the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda introduced a wind cheating, earth friendly, fuel cell-powered concept called the FCX. Several weeks ago in Detroit at the NAIAS, Honda quietly announced that they would build a production vehicle based on the FCX concept. With the advancements they’ve made for this latest generation of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles, a production model will be ready within three to four years.’
`Water, water everywhere and we are duped into buying it bottled.
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief–often mistaken, as it happens–that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week. [..]
“Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing–producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy,” said [a researcher]. “Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more.”‘
`Australian and other scientists have found a “Lost World” in a remote Indonesian mountain jungle, home to exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants as well as mammals unafraid of humans despite being hunted to near extinction elsewhere.
“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the US, Indonesian and Australian expedition to part of the cloud-shrouded Foja mountains in the province of Papua that covers the western half of New Guinea.’
`A sailor who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from England – accusing him of littering. “I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished,” Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star. [..]
Last week, he excitedly opened a letter from England, and was stunned by the reply:
“I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed” of “oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter.”
“You Americans don’t seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere,” says the letter, signed by Henry Biggelsworth of Bournemouth, in Dorset County.’
`A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used to monitor air pollution, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
The 20 pigeons will be released into the skies over San Jose, California, in August.
Each bird will carry a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic mobile phone.
Text messages on air quality will be beamed back in real time to a special pigeon “blog,” a journal accessible on the Internet.’
‘Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend. [..]
There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world’s fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.’
`Wave and tidal power can provide a fifth of the UK’s electricity needs, according to a new report. [..]
Despite Britain’s long shoreline and the vast power contained in its breakers and tides, the Carbon Trust believes only about one fifth of the country’s electricity could economically come from the sea.
It says that wave farms could generate 50 terawatt-hours (TWh – one thousand million kilowatt-hours) per year, and tidal stream installations a further 18TWh.’
`The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” he said.’
`A US Environmental Protection Agency has found possible links between non-stick cookware, cancer and birth defects and is now asking manufacturers to start winding down production. [..]
Non-stick pots and pans are supposed to be good for you, as they need less fat to cook with.
But the coating contains a compound that the US environmental protection agency has warned may harm our health. [..]
Vet Naya Brangenberg says vets have long known that the fumes from cooking with non-stick pans can be deadly to household birds.
“They’ll have a sudden accumulation of fluid and blood in their lungs, and this fluid will cause them to have a similar effect to drowning, where they can’t absorb oxygen from the air and they will drown to death.”‘
`Iceland has energy to spare, and the small country has found a cutting-edge way to reduce its oil dependency. Volcanoes formed the island nation out of ash and lava, and molten rock heats huge underground lakes to the boiling point.
The hot water — energy sizzling beneath the surface — is piped into cities and stored in giant tanks, providing heat for homes, businesses and even swimming pools.
The volcanoes melted ice, which formed rivers. The water runs through turbines, providing virtually all the country’s electricity.
Iceland wants to make a full conversion and plans to modify its cars, buses and trucks to run on renewable energy — with no dependence on oil.’
‘Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency — five Republicans and one Democrat — accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. [..]
All of the former administrators and EPA’s current chief, Stephen Johnson, raised their hands when asked by the event moderator whether they believe global warming is a real problem, and again when he asked if humans bear significant blame.
But agency heads during five Republican administrations, including the current one, criticized the Bush White House for what they described as a failure of leadership.’
`Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind’s abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion – that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.’
`Wildlife researchers have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears, already gravely threatened by the melting of their habitat because of global warming, are being poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and carpets.
A team of scientists from Canada, Alaska, Denmark and Norway is sounding the alarm about the flame retardants, known as polybrominated diphenyls, or PBDEs, saying that significant deposits have recently been found in the fatty tissues of polar bears, especially in eastern Greenland and Norway’s Svalbard islands.’
`The Prime Minister’s brother, Stan Howard, will be prosecuted for chopping down up to 70 endangered trees on his property at Bowral in the southern New South Wales highlands.
Wingecarribee Shire Council spokesman Larry Whipper says Mr Howard and the contractor who bulldozed the trees could face a jail term and a $100,000 fine.’
`Americans bought an estimated $125 billion worth of consumer electronics — computers, monitors, cell phones, televisions — this past year. With hundreds of millions of them becoming obsolete every year in this country, what happens to all the stuff we don’t want any more? [..]
The average computer monitor contains more than five pounds of lead. Computers can also contain mercury and cadmium. When you multiply that by the millions of outdated computers and monitors, you’ve got lots of toxins that you don’t want to put back into the earth.
It’s environmentally unsafe for individuals to just throw out computers and monitors, but federal law prohibits businesses from doing it.
Businesses usually pay electronic recyclers to haul away the old equipment and pull it apart, and if it’s done right, pretty much everything can be reused.
Unfortunately, it’s not always done right. That’s dirty little secret No. 2: Some recyclers may not be recycling everything. Actually, some experts say most recyclers aren’t recycling everything.’
`Water supplies in Harbin , home to more than 3 million people, were cut off last night and will not resume “until further notice”. Schools have been closed whilst many residents are trying to leave the cities because city authorities have warned that pollution is threatening the water supply, which comes from the Songhua River.
An assessment by the Heilongjiang Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau found the river had been contaminated by chemicals released by a massive explosion at the Jilin Petroleum and Chemical Company plant in the city of Jilin on November 13. [..]
The November 13 explosion in the Jilin chemical plant released highly toxic substances, killing at least five people and forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 nearby residents. It also contaminated the partially frozen Songhua River with benzene and phenyl, which can lead to hepatitis, urinary tract diseases and possibly cancer.’
`Greenland’s ice cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists said on Thursday.
The 9,842-feet thick ice cap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 meters. And a runaway thaw might slow the Gulf Stream that keeps the North Atlantic region warm.’
`The quest for a new form of green energy has taken a significant step with the purchase of a 25,000-acre sheep farm in the Australian outback. The huge alternative energy project isn’t driven by manure, but by a 1-kilometer-high thermal power station called the Solar Tower.
Announced several years ago, the 3,280-foot Solar Tower is one of the most ambitious alternative energy projects on the planet: a renewable energy plant that pumps out the same power as a small reactor but is totally safe. If built, it will be nearly double the height of the world’s tallest structure, the CN Tower in Canada.’
