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POPSSimple Low-Tech Home Wins Prize For Sustainability
Woodruff's house uses just 25% of the energy of a conventional house of the same size. His winter power costs are a $30 electricity bill each month and a cord of wood. In the summer, power is needed only for the hot water heater and appliances. Yet the little 1,100-sq.-ft. house is as straightforward as you can get. No high-tech gizmos. No elaborate contortions. The house relies on simple architectural principles -- windows oriented for sunlight, cross breezes for ventilation, overhangs for shade -- basics that were much lauded in the 1940s and '50s, but less emphasized since. They included large doors that can be opened for cross-breezes. They designed the heating so energy is used and reused within rooms. The living/ dining/kitchen area is one big room heated by a wood stove on rainy days, and the sun on sunny days. "The public rooms face east, the logic being you want those to heat up with the sun first in the winter and in the summer, you want to avoid the hot western sun.
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POPSWhy Greenland isn't so green Greenhouse gas levels before the Industrial Revolution were 280 parts per million (ppm), and now stand at around 385 ppm - just shy of the 400 ppm that prevailed in Greenland's pre-ice era. The more they study climate models the more uncertainty they have, because the weather keeps showing them it involves a lot more than they imagined. But almost any weatherman could tell you that. They usually have trouble predicting tomorrows weather. They also know, that in 20 years they'll be forgotten, and people will be asking the incumbent weathermen. Who will still be predicting a 60% chance of showers. In case you were interested In 982 Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder., he named the land Grænland ("Greenland").] Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") and Engronelant (or Engroneland) on early maps. They also say (in Wikki) that while only small parts of the island are green, they are, they are Very green. Perhaps it's the contrast.
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POPSEnergy at your feet Finally, unlike roof-top solar arrays, which some find unattractive, the solar collectors in roads and parking lots would be invisible.” In the lab, small slabs were exposed to halogen lamps, simulating sunlight. Larger slabs were set up outdoors and exposed to more realistic environmental conditions, including direct sunlight and wind. The tests showed that asphalt absorbs a considerable amount of heat and that the highest temperatures are found a few centimeters below the surface. This is where a heat exchanger would be located to extract the maximum amount of energy. Experimenting with various asphalt compositions, they found that the addition of highly conductive aggregates, like quartzite, can significantly increase heat absorption, as can the application of a special paint that reduces reflection.
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POPSKomodo dragons; Komodo dragons The first dragon had grabbed it by its testicles and was starting to chew its way into the body from below. The second dragon was slowly forcing the buffalo's head open and was going down its throat. The third was, as they say, going in the back door. To make an already grisly scene far worse, the whole slow-motion kill was being conducted in deep mud. After a few hours all was black - apart from the blood that occasionally bubbled up from the muddy depths, the white saliva that sometimes oozed from the buffalo's mouth and the bright, flickering forked tongues of the three dragons, which were forever darting around. Slippery things slithered slowly over other slippery things until it was hard to tell whose tail was whose, where one body started and another stopped and who was doing what to whom. The smell was fetid, the heat intense. Every so often the buffalo shuddered and tried to rise. Was it really still alive? We watched from a few feet away,
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POPSThat Wacky Century - Part IX (1985-2000) Yes. We all agree that the NASA jokes about the disaster were in poor taste but I swear that I heard the first one less than 24 hours after the explosion! New Coke, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?? Hmm. I am glad I am allergic to Coke!
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POPSBig Brown's Stunning Belmont Loss and needed to be cooled off with buckets of water and sprayed with hoses after they ran. Co-owner Michael Iavarone said Big Brown had a thorough examination after the race and again Sunday morning. "There's nothing physically that's shown up," he said, speaking by cell phone from his daughter's soccer game on Long Island. "I'm as confused as anybody. The only thing we're resorting to right now is the track might have been too deep for him and he didn't like it out there." Iavarone said Big Brown's problem feet, other than a loose left hind shoe, were not an issue. "We're perplexed," he said. "Nobody can figure this one out." Without any obvious answers, it might take blood work and diagnostic testing, including X-rays, to figure out Big Brown's poor performance.
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POPSUrban Gardener Thinks Higher: A Rooftop Garden for Room to Grow Why should you consider a rooftop garden? * Increase access to private outdoor green space within the urban environment * Support urban food production * Promote individual, community, and cultural diversity * Improve air quality and reduce CO2 missions * Delay stormwater runoff * Increase habitat for birds * Insulate buildings * Increase the value of buildings for owners and tenants alike * Create job opportunities in the field of research, design, construction, Iandscaping, gardening, health, and food production
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POPSCity Slickers Turn Tropical Entrepreneurs: An Eco-Adventure
Imagine going after your dream business…on a tropical island. What does it really take to build an island resort? In 2002, four city slickers set out to build their dream business in the Panamanian rainforest: called Tranquilo Bay. All of the buildings at Tranquilo Bay—are constructed from steel, virtually unheard of in that corner of Panama: but they wanted to protect against termites, sea air, and earthquake damage. Jim Kimball and Jay Viola knew nothing about construction before beginning work on the buildings. They learned everything they needed from the Internet during Sunday visits to the mainland. “We built Tranquilo Bay inside the rainforest overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the beautiful Panamanian Jungle. Our central location within the archipelago of Bocas del Toro permits us to explore some of the most biologically diverse areas of Panama and Central America: an archipelago of some 68 tropical islands” http://www.tranquilobay.com/home.htm
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POPS ‘Feel Good’ vs. ‘Do Good’ on Climate Change>>>NYTimes<<< No one knows exactly what global warming will produce, it may not be worth taking expensive steps to forestall a one-foot rise in the sea level. Dr. Lomborg’s critics argue that we owe it to future generations to prepare for the worst-case projections. “No historian would look back at the last two centuries and rank the rising sea level here as one of the city’s major problems,” he said, sitting safely dry and cool inside the *Bridge Cafe. “I don’t think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I’d rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.” *We went to an old wooden building near the Brooklyn Bridge that is home to the Bridge Cafe, which bills itself as “New York’s Oldest Drinking Establishment.” There’s been drinking in the building since the late 18th century, when it was erected on Water Street along the shore of Lower Manhattan.
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POPSAntarctic glaciers surge toward ocean Much higher up the course of the glacier there is evidence of a volcano that erupted through the ice about 2,000 years ago and the whole region could be volcanically active, releasing geothermal heat to melt the base of the ice and help its slide towards the sea.
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POPSArctic is cooling - reverse circulation in Arctic ocean Here's more great news. Prolonged la Nina means a cool summer in Texas and a very wet Spring. This spring we had 28 inches of rain in one day that broke the draught, raising our lake levels over 14 feet. South Americans are experiencing record cold temperatures. One wonders how democrats can manage to get virtually everything wrong from Iraq to global warming. It can only confirm that liberalism is a mental disorder.
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POPSHow to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic (FAQ) More common questions and myths answered at the source, thoroughly cross-referenced and conveniently categorized and sub-categorized by type of argument: Stages of Denial Scientific Topics Types of Argument Levels of Sophistication A nice reference that's updated with fresh comments. Many "skeptics" often are unaware (by choice or by circumstance) that their common questions have already been addressed by scientists long ago.
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POPSNJ shore residents complain about windmill the windmill is too noisy, creates shadows on their property and spoils their sleep. This makes me so angry I could explode! How self-absorbed can people be? Here is a man trying to do something about pollution by creating alternative energy resources & his neighbors complain?
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POPSGlobal Warming Debunked Series III More from my Global Warming debunked research. This particular site deals with facts gathered by author Michael Crichton's when he was researching his novel State of Fear. Mr. Crichton has since gone on multiple speaking tours as an advocate of the anti-global warming camp. These facts are all real, not created for the fiction novel.
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