The Recycling Bin: A Roundup of Green News, Al Gore Edition
What are ecobloggers talking about as we ease into the weekend? Our president of global warming, Al Gore.
- After yesterday's Gore speech, conservative bloggers like the team at Americans for Prosperity are gleefully pointing out that Gore arrived at the event in a car, despite asking supporters to take bikes or public transportation.
- Wired Magazine says of Gore's 10-year plan: "Absent a huge run-up in coal prices, a fusion power breakthrough, or some unforeseen technology, it seems impossible."
- J.S. McDougall of the Huffington Post tells us how we, the little people, can achieve Gore's big goals.
- Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens responded to Gore's speech, emphasizing the differences between their environmental plans. "My plan is aimed squarely at breaking the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our country and the $700 billion annual impact it has on our economy. We import 70 percent of our oil, and that number is growing larger every year. Vice President Gore's plan does not address this enormous problem," he said.
- CNET's Neal Dikeman wonders, "Is Al Gore Nuts?" likening Gore's charge to "challenging your 2-year-old to finish college by the time she is 12." But, he concedes, "if Al Gore's silly challenge on renewable energy was simply a Trojan horse to get people talking about how to move forward on fighting climate change and addressing our long-standing energy policy issues, I'm all for that and am happy to help."
- John Tierney of the New York Times wonders why Gore hurts his cause with "junk science," such as irrelevantly pointing out an increase of tornadoes. He also wonders why Gore avoids discussing nuclear power.
And, in other green news:
- At World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia, Pope Benedict told 200,000 young Roman Catholics that the world's resources are being spoiled by "insatiable consumption."
- You may have heard that global warming can give you kidney stones.
- Here's what to do with your old iPhone when you've upgraded to the shiny new version.
- California just adopted a green building code for all new construction.
- Calling all extreme recyclers: Don't toss your dryer lint into the trash, says the Budget Ecoist.
Tags: blogs | Al Gore | environment
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Reader Comments
We need some grounwork too before the sopfisticated approches
Every one particularly the youth has excellent ideas that when assembled together can give us a recipe for a better world. Also and fortunately modern communication technology makes it easier to most of us to join our action and come to rescue when our planet or our world is in peril.
To fight global warming, it requires many simple things. For now we bet on the Stimulus Plan. It contains provisions for a good start. But while the big tasks lye with scientists, decision-makers and ecologists, why don’t we focus on some easy steps affordable to each of us to reverse the global economic downturn and counter the menacing climatic changes.
We need to recover lost values that used to keep us together and go to ancestors’ archives to retrieve a "Dumasian" sort of formula ‘All for one and one for all’. We should learn to live, taking and giving with joyful abandon. And we will find love. Differences and self-interests put aside, we will then forge some sort of unity and strive like one toward a common good, the safeguard of our planet.
Love, peace, inclusiveness, acceptance, tolerance -were the best themes of the last elections, forgetting whatever the differences to look forwards to better converging on a sort of universality. (Senghor and Césaire)
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How can we help each other in order to achieve something constructive? e.g. I want to convey messages raising awareness on global warming using printed items such as bags and t-shirts and even covers of exercises book for school children. I think of killing two birds with one stone. Great effort worldwide is being done to discourage the abusive use of plastic bags. They are banned or subjected to restriction or regulations e.g. Bags more than 30 microns thick last longer and can be utilized more than once. In order to tackle the problem of financing we can approach some sponsors in different areas like sport and business communities and offer services, as to sale a space on the bag for marketing or promotion. Adjustments are made possible in order to accommodate short Ads the firm intends to do e.g. ‘Join us at Macy’s to fight Global Warming’.
It is amazing. Two years ago for the end of the year school party I wrote a poem for 5-6 year old Kenyan kids and now "One people one nation" is repeated so often by our president. Here it is.
For prints on bags, T-shirts, exercises books.
The American Dream
One People
One Nation
One Nation
One people
All of us in each of us
Each of us in all of us
Living together loving
Loving together living in harmony
Peacefully happily
In a wonder world
Of peace love and happiness
JD
LET’S KNOW ABOUT OUR DIFFERENCES
SO AS TO BETTER CONVERGE ON UNIVERSAL
From Senghor and Césaire
OUR RESEMBLANCES
BUT MAINLY OUR DIFFERENCES
ADJUSTMENTS MARKS
ON THE PATHS TO UNIVERSAL
Jacques Datus
Al Gore
When is this bag of wind going to admit he's wrong on global warming, climate change, energy...you name it? Gore is a classic huckster convincing gullible people they are guilty of killing the environment, then profiting greatly from the "crisis" he created.
If Obama is elected Gore will surely become the climate czar by acclamation. GOD HELP US ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hydrogen Power
I have an Idea of a way to run an auto, truck oa airplane on hydrogen, even use it to heat and light a house. This is what I worked out.
First use an electrolysis device to break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen.The only thing that bothers me is that either electrolysis uses more energy than the hydrogen and oxygen can provide or is too expensive to consider for commercial use. I think the latter is the case, if I’m right that won’t matter, however if the former is the case
then household electricity would be used.
The Oxygen/Hydrogen Generator would be constructed some what like a car battery. It would contain a series of plates alternating between positive and negative charges in a bath of distilled or filtered water. Between and above each plate would be a baffle, to keep the oxygen and hydrogen separated. The gasses would flow through manifolds to a pair of small compressors that would pump the gasses into their respective pressure tanks. The pressure tanks would have a fill tube with a flapper type of valve and an escape tube to feed fuel to the engine.
The Oxygen and Hydrogen would be fed to the cylinders by way of manifolds. On the down stroke each cylinder would receive a measured amount of (for all practical purposes) pure Hydrogen and pure Oxygen. This combination being burned in the cylinders produces almost 100% fuel efficiency. The exhaust manifold would feed through a muffler to a drain where waste
water will be expelled, or perhaps it could be routed back to the Oxygen/Hydrogen Generator.
The whole exhaust system from the manifolds to the tail pipe must be made out of stainless steel or some other suitable, high temperature material.
The above should work if electrolysis produced Hydrogen and Oxygen is too expensive for commercial production,
If the production of these gasses produces a net loss of energy then more energy must be introduced from electricity. A male plug would be accessible on the car that a
COMMON extenuation cord could be connected to produce hysrogen and oxygen The pressure tanks would have to be of sufficient size to drive the car for 300 to 400 miles or more.
The Oxygen/Hydrogen Generator must also be heated, using either heat from the engine or electricity produced by the alternator. In either case I envision a thermostat in
the Oxygen/Hydrogen Generator that would automatically start the engine in a “safe mode” so that the water in the Oxygen/Hydrogen Generator would not freeze. The car
would not be operable in safe mode. The ignition key must be used to put the engine into “operative mode”.
This engine system could be used to heat and electrify houses also. There the main consideration would be noise. One Idea I had was to design a turbine engine, a miniature of a turboprop engine to run an electric generator. Such an engine would produce a whining sound which could be properly muffeled for home use.
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