The 4,000 year old, 41 square mile long Ayles Ice Shelf, has broken off of an island 500 miles from the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic. The giant floating chunk of ice may threaten shipping and oil/gas operations this Spring.
Mother earth could be attacking the source of global warming as one of her icy battleships breaks up into a frozen, fighting flotilla...
American architect Thom Mayne is building a wind-powered skyscraper in Paris, France. Standing at 984 feet, the building will be nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
Wind turbines will power the building's HVAC systems for part of the year. A retractable outer layer will reduce the heat from sunlight through the windows in summer.
The building, set for completion in 2012, will cost close to $1 billion.
An updated hydrogen powered Honda FCX debuted at the LA Auto Show last month.
In December 2002, the city of Los Angeles began leasing the first of five Honda FCXs, which are now used in normal, everyday activities by city officials.
The new car is more refined, is designed as a more universally useful design, larger and has a new stack layout (hydrogen and water flow vertically). Limited marketing of a totally new fuel cell vehicle based on this concept model is to begin in 2008 in Japan and the U.S.
The consumer has two choices: Drive the market or be driven into poverty.
Xcel Energy and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)has a pilot facility that uses electricity from wind turbines to power electrolyzes to produce hydrogen, which is then compressed and stored at 3,500 psi.
http://airnow.gov/ blends weather maps with a glimpse of the air quality for the United States.
Breath deep - the air quality for York will be pretty good for the next couple days.
I decided to search tonight for the most creatively, wasteful SUV that I could find.. the winner is:
The Europeans will get a new Volkswagen Polo in 2007 with fewer CO2 emissions than a Toyota Prius.
VW claims the Polo BuleMotion is the most economical five-seater in Europe, emitting 102g/km – 2g/km less than Toyota's electric-hybrid and squeezing 72.4 miles out of a gallon of diesel.
Monthly sales of the Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid car are down 28% since August. Ford Motor Co. is cutting the price of its Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrid SUVs by more $1,200. Sales of the Lexus RX400h hybrid fell nearly 23% in November from a year earlier.
U.S. scientists say 'off-peak' electricity capacity could fuel 84 percent of the nation`s 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics
...Toyota will integrate a diesel engine into its Synergy hybrid drivetrain, you are right, according to Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor North America.The modularity of the hybrid system makes it applicable to a range of power plants and fuel sources, he added. "It is the same hybrid system that works with all of those."
GM already makes a hybrid Vue that gets 27 miles per gallon in the city and 32 mpg on the highway. The plug-in Vue will get about 70 mpg, said Troy Clarke, GM's North American president.http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=5&issue=20061129
No date has been set for it's production.
Passed along by Greenmesh reader Barry: "Micro Fuel Cells" MTI Micro: mtimicrofuelcells.com developed the fuel cell to power military laptops. Samsung is a buyer of fuel cells from this company for the civilian project mentioned in the last post.
A fuel cell would be perfect for use on the military field where it's impracticable to charge batteries and sound draws attention. While generators make noise and exhaust, a fuel cell is silent. Feed it fuel and it stealthily makes electricity without all the pistons, generators and other old world contraptions.
Fuel cell powered cars are out of reach for most consumers, but SAIT and Samsung SDI are developing the world’s smallest fuel cell charger to fit in your pocket for mobile devices and is near commercialization next year. The charger, using methanol cartridges, is 5mm thick and weighs 5.5 ounces.
Christmas Magic, at Rocky Ridge County Park in Springettsbury Township, has added 2,000 strings of LED lights to their display. LED, or light emitting diode, lights are said to use a third-less electricity. The annual Christmas display features 300,000 lights. The electric bill last year came to $8,000.
Light emitting diodes are tiny semi-conductors (or gates) with a specific purpose for electrons that fit into an electrical circuit. Unlike incandescent bulbs, they don't have a filament that generates light by the resistance of electrons pushed amass over a narrow gateway.
PBS has launched http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/ to engage you in the production of a documentary.
The show will address a topic of concern to all of us: can we transition to a new breed of vehicles that relies less on oil and produces fewer greenhouse gases? NPR personalities Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a.k.a. the "Car Talk" Guys) will pepper the program with their unique brand of humor as they test-drive alternative vehicles, meet leading energy policy gurus, etc.
Ashley Zeigler of PennEnvironment wrote the York Daily Record/Sunday News :
To the Editor:
Not only is the Bush administration failing to provide leadership in reducing global warming pollution, but now the administration is putting up roadblocks for Pennsylvania and 10 other states trying to implement new standards to cut pollution from cars and light trucks.
Greenmesh reader Barry writes:
Hope you can "post" this website/info for those following our trip to the future.The website is very informative about the company itself but not to informational about the technology. One interesting thing was the small-sized engine(1500cc) and the addition of a "turbo-charger" and only using "regular gas" for this mileage increase. This has always been a "problem" with using turbo's and they seem to have solved this issue.
