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      Blow to climate change deniers

      October 22, 2011 /

      This is pretty interesting, as all of the global warming skeptics will now have to face this study from a former skeptic.

      Climate change deniers thought they had an ally in Richard Muller, a popular physics professor at UC Berkeley.

      Muller didn’t reject climate science per se, but he was a skeptic, and a convenient one for big polluters and conservative anti-environmentalists — until Muller put their money where his mouth was, and launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, in part with a grant from the Charles G. Koch foundation.

      After extensive study, he’s concluded that the existing science was right all along — that the earth’s surface is warming, at an accelerating rate. But instead of second-guessing themselves, his erstwhile allies of convenience are now abandoning him.

      “When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote in a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections. Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate.”

      This does not speak to the issue of whether humans are causing the warming, but it’s another persuasive set of data on this issue of warming itself.

      Uncategorized

      Fact check on global warming and scientific consensus

      September 1, 2011 /

      A number of politicians, particularly many Republicans, are questioning whether global warming is being caused by human activity. Some are now claiming that scientists are split on the issue. Politifact decided to check up on these ridiculous claims:

      To begin with, a 2007 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading international scientific body on climate science, states: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone.” (External forcing refers to anything that changes the climate that is outside of the normal climate system.)

      A 2009 report from the U.S. Global Change Research Programreached a similar conclusion: “Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities.”

      Current climate change research was reviewed again this year by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences. The committee it assembled concluded that global warming poses significant risksand is happening primarily because of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. It rejected the idea that those findings are in any way questionable.

      “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanations,” the committee’s report said.

      The scientific consensus on global warming is clear.

      Global Warming

      Solar power hit the battlefield

      August 16, 2011 /

      Here’s an interesting story about portable solar power:

      The U.S. Navy’s bomb squads have a weight problem. To keep their field gear powered up, the typical explosive ordnance disposal unit has to haul fifty pounds of specialized chargers and related devices around, creating an unwieldy and potentially dangerous drag on the operation.

      Now help is coming from an unexpected source: the sun.

      The Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit 2 in Virginia has been testing five prototype lightweight field power kits that include solar cells as a key component. The kits replace fifty pounds of equipment with a compact system that weighs only about nine pounds.

      The heart of the kit is a one-pound device called a Soldier Power Manager. The Power Manager functions like a smart micro-mini-grid. In contrast to a portable generator that runs only on diesel fuel, the Power Manager can receive energy from various sources including solar panels and fuel cells. It recharges other devices by cable attachments, eliminating the need for individual battery chargers.

      Renewable Energy

      How Classifieds are Saving the Planet

      August 10, 2011 /

      Online classified ads are the best thing to happen to the Earth since the hybrid. With a classified ad, resources can be reduced, reused, and recycled with minimal fuss or difficulty. Let’s look at how online classifieds are saving the planet in more detail.

      The average item’s lifecycle consists of many stages:
      1. Gathering raw materials
      2. Shipping materials to a factory
      3. Producing a new item
      4. Shipping item to stores
      5. People taking the item home
      6. The item’s usage
      7. Item disposal
      8. The item being shipped to a junkyard
      9. If the item is not biodegradable (think plastic or metal), it will sit in the junkyard indefinitely

      When items are sold in classifieds online, or ‘reused,’ their lifecycle is different:
      1. Gathering raw materials
      2. Shipping materials to a factory
      3. Producing a new item
      4. Shipping item to stores
      5. People taking the item home
      6. The items usage
      7. Item given to new owner
      8. The items usage
      9. Item given to new owner
      10. The items usage
      11. Repeat

      The joy and excitement people feel when they crack open the packaging of a new electronic device or open the box that contains a new bed frame is often the only reason people are willing to pay much more to be the first to own an item. Pragmatically, is there a reason to pay 100% more for something ‘new,’ when gently used electronics or furniture serve the same purpose?
      Here are some great points to consider before you go to a store to buy something that could be obtained from a website like eBay. Remember: you can always package your gently used item in plastic wrap and open it like a ‘new’ item.

      Reducing Waste
      Classified ads save tons of waste every single day, literally. Every time someone decides to sell or give away a piece of technology, a bicycle, or an article of clothing, more space in a landfill stays open. While it might not seem like a few sweaters and a laptop computer or two will make any difference, the small things in life add up.

      Cutting Down Paper Usage

      Paper usage.

      Paper takes up a lot of space in a landfill (about 28 percent!), and paper production kills trees. Because the factories and other equipment used in harvesting and processing wood into paper use petroleum-based fuel, using paper is bad for the environment. When you use online classified ads, you save a lot of paper-production pollution.

      Saving Fuel
      Raw materials have to be delivered, items are produced in pollutant-expelling factories, and then items are shipped to stores (often across the globe) for consumption. That’s a lot of fuel usage for your new iPod!

      In Conclusion
      The online classified ad is a beautiful thing. With it, you can make friends in the forest by saving paper, and you can save a lot of fuel that’s wasted in the production of new goods. Overall, online classified ads are good for the environment in every possible way. Rather than adding to a landfill when you’re done with an item, pass it on to the next owner who will love it, and find yourself something affordable and gently used in turn!

      Uncategorized

      3 Ways to Go Green without Even Trying

      July 26, 2011 /

      Do you sigh when you think about all of the lifestyle changes that you would need to make in order to truly go green? There’s no reason to fret, though. In fact, these three ways to go green without even trying will make the world a better place without even forcing you to make huge changes in your lifestyle. That’s something worth exploring.

      Reduce Your Office’s Paper Use

      Offices can waste a lot of paper. All of those receipts, faxes, and printouts eventually have to go somewhere. Even when you take care to recycle your office’s paper waste, you still place a burden on the environment. It does, after all, take a lot of energy to recycle that paper.

      You can reduce your office’s impact on the environment by using the new MetroFax mobile app. This app lets you receive faxes on your mobile phone. That means you don’t have to print out the fax to read it. The app is even more convenient than printing faxes because it allows you to search the last 200 documents that you received.

      Make Walking Easier Than Driving

      Motor vehicles often seem too tempting to avoid. The tendency is to hop in your car for every errand, even if you’re just going down the street to pick up lunch for your colleagues.
      The PedNav app appeals to the lazy part of every person by providing the most time efficient way to get from point A to point B without using your car. When you make walking easier by finding the best route, you could find that the car becomes an unnecessary burden, especially when you consider all of the time that you spend looking for parking spots and sitting at red lights.

      Find the Greenest Route for Your Vehicle

      Motor vehicles spew a lot of carbon into the air. Reducing the amount that you drive could simultaneously reduce your carbon footprint. The truth, however, gets a little more complicated than choosing the shortest route. You have to consider traffic congestion, speed limits, and other factors to choose the greenest route for your vehicle.

      Ecorio does all of that for you. This smart phone app uses GPS technology to keep track of how much carbon your vehicle emits. It does more than just make you feel guilty, though. You can also use Ecorio to find routes that will result in decreased carbon emissions. You don’t have to do anything but ask the app to tell you the best route to take. You can even keep track of your daily habits to make long-lasting changes in behaviors that might harm the environment.

      These three apps represent some of the latest technologies that can help you go green without even trying. Sure, you could stop using the fax machine or give up your car, but you don’t have to become an extremist to make positive changes in the world. What are some of ways that you have gone green without doing much more than lifting a finger and touching your smart phone?

      Uncategorized

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