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Solar Tower by EnviroMissin

Fuji's batteries are becoming more environmental friendly. This is just the kind of spirit we like in production companies! Check them out here:

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Nissan LEAF™: Polar Bear

Solar Power Towers Coming To California

The United States of America will now produce clear power that can light up as many as 11000 to 277500 homes in the country. The Sectary of Interior Ken Salazar has given a go ahead to the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system, a project proposed by BrightSource of Oakland that can produce up to 370 megawatt of clear energy and generate nearly 1100 opportunities for employment. The project, located in San Bernardino Country, California, is the inaugural large-scale solar energy project on US public soil to use the power tower.

• The project, which will be in three phases, will finish by the year 2013.
• This know-how takes the help of mirror fields so that solar energy is pointed on the power tower receivers closer to every array. To generate electricity, Steam from the solar boilers in the towers is used to drive a turbine and electricity is produced.

How will it help the Administration.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system will be one project that will be a win-win situation for both the administration and BrightSource.

• This will give a boost to administration’s efforts for quick growth of production of renewable energy on public property on a large scale. Whereas the Sectary of Interior had given a green signal to first of such projects on October 5, with Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system, this figure has reached to 3.
• A day later, Salzar also signed a lease deal with Cape Wind to generate 468 megawatts of clean renewable electricity for Nantucket Sound Communities by purchasing a 130 turbine offshore wind farm.
• This would be the first lease on the Outer Continental Shelf to develop commercial wind energy.
• All these efforts will help USA to build a clean energy economy that could generate 1124 megawatts of clean energy to lit-up between 337000 and 843000 homes.
• It will reduce carbon emission and help the nation as a whole by making USA independent in its energy needs and strengthen its national security.

How will it help BrightSource Energy.

• The decision gives the power to Interior’s Bureau of Land management to give a site in the Southern California’s Mojave Desert, close to the Primm, Nevada border, to BrightSource so that they can use it for 30 years, provided they comply with all conditions including rent.
• BrightSource will be eligible to recover 30 percent of their cost, which the energy developers can recover under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provided they have started the construction work before or in 2010. The U.S. department of Energy has also awarded them $ 1.37 billion in conditional loan guarantees as per the provisions of Recovery act.
• The project Ivanpah is processed by Bureau of Land Management and the California Energy Commission (CEC) cooperative model established by an October 12, 2009 agreement. It is based on an agreement between Secretary Salazar and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which tells the Interior and state agencies to take initiative to develop renewable energy in the land of California, which is best suited to the environment.

Environmental hazards And public accountability.
Keeping with the norms of the state- private partnership and the fact that it is working on harnessing alternative means of energy, BrightSource is required to make its share of contribution to protect the environment. BrightSource will be needed to acquire around 7300 mitigation acres. According to a plan of the US Fish and Wildlife services, which BrightSource has to follow, it has to test 3 million Desert Tortoise selected by Bureau of Land Management in California for diseases and then monitor them by locating them to a more suitable place. The company will also have to contribute to the joint compensation fund created by Federal and State agencies and operated by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the negative effect it causes to various resources including water and wildlife.
As a part of its social duty, BrightSource has allowed its solar energy enhancing projects to go through various public scrutinies for environment hazards. These include:

• Public scoping in 2007
• Draft environment Impact Statement in 2009
• Full public involvement in 2009
• A supplement draft in 2010 before a final environment Impact Statement was prepared.

As noted by Salazar, important changes were made in the project. The size of BrightSource’s project was cut by 15%, from 4,073 acres down to 3,471 acres and the number of heliostats (solar mirrors) from 214,000 to 173,500 by the Bureau of Land Management after this scrutiny.
Reacting to these changes made in the project after public scrutiny, Salazar said, “Since it is essential that we learn from our past experiences to make certain that we wisely develop clean energy at the appropriate places, I am happy that changes have been made to improve the project.”

Linkin Park - What I've Done

Song dedicated to global warming. Enjoy!

Human Effects: Air Pollution and Heat...

Human Effects: Air Pollution and Heat... Summary

The sprawling urban metropolis of Vancouver, British Columbia.
As the human population has grown in size and become more industrialized, societies have increased their impact on the atmospheric environment. The most dramatic effects result from the release of numerous gases and particulates. Although many of the emissions that we consider pollutants result from natural processes, rapid dispersion of these materials prevents them from causing negative impacts. In industrial and urban areas, on the other hand, these emissions are concentrated into smaller areas and often lead to serious problems.
Some atmospheric pollutants are released directly into the atmosphere (primary pollutants), while others result from transformations of other gases (secondary pollutants). Particulates are solid and liquid aerosols that can be produced as either primary or secondary pollutants. Recent research has shown that the health effects of the smallest particulates are most critical because they are easily lodged in lung tissue. Pollutant gases include carbon oxides, sulfur compounds, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (also called hydrocarbons), and photochemically formed gases (the most notable of which is ozone). Each gas presents its own set of health problems, ranging from reduced immunity to permanent lung damage to cardiovascular problems.
Up until the middle part of the twentieth century, efforts to control these emissions were instituted on a local scale. Beginning in 1955, the U.S. government began to enact laws designed to improve air quality across the nation and reduce the number of major health problems that result from air pollution. The original Clean Air Act and its amendments have had a dramatic impact on air quality. This legislation has required the formation of local agencies to monitor pollution levels and ensure compliance with federal standards. It has also required the automobile industry, power utilities, ore smelting plants, and manufacturing industries to reduce the amount of their emissions. While reductions in many pollutants have been dramatic, numerous cities in the United States still have not met clean air goals.
The amount of air pollution does not depend entirely on the activities of people; atmospheric conditions also affect the dispersal of pollutants. If winds are strong and constantly shift direction, pollutants are distributed over a larger area and concentrations decrease. Statically unstable air also favors the dilution of gases and particulates by enhancing vertical mixing. On the other hand, stable conditions and, in particular, the presence of an inversion, can greatly restrict vertical motions and concentrate pollutants near the ground.
Human impacts on the atmosphere are not restricted to pollution. The urban heat island is a well-known phenomenon in which changes in the surface (e.g., the replacement of vegetated surfaces with concrete and asphalt), the existence of buildings with vertical walls, and the release of heat as a by-product of human activity combine to increase temperatures. These increases are most notable during the evening and nighttime hours and in the winter season. We have now looked at the natural processes that make up daily weather, and the ways humans analyze, predict, and alter the resultant patterns. The next two chapters concern the longer-term state of the atmosphere—the climate

Use humane methods to kill animals for food

Humans are not  vegetarians.They eat meat. I think God put animals here for our use, but not for our abuse. I hate the way most meat animals are treated. Many are kept in tiny cages or small pens, and they never have any quality of life. Our animals weren’t treated this way. I guess ours were what would now be referred to as “free range.” Our livestock, however, was free range before the term became popular. Most meat animals in the South raised on family farms are still free range. We don’t have many of the huge feed lots like the Midwest does. This, however, has already been discussed in other hubs. Today I want to focus on the actual killing of the abused animals. I also want to suggest a way to save the animals from a cruel death.
Cruelty to animals
If you’ve never visited the business end of a slaughterhouse, you’d most likely be shocked by what you saw. I’ve been in several and have seen videos of numerous others. Most slaughterhouses do not even attempt to kill the animals in a humane manner. They’re often beaten, kicked, and shocked with electric prods as they’re forced into the chutes. This is a clear example of cruelty to animals.
More cruelty to animals
How are the animals killed? Some of it depends on the individual slaughterhouse, but cows and pigs are usually stunned with a powerful electrical shock. The abused animals are then hung upside down by either one or both hind legs, and their throats are cut. This allows the animals to “bleed out.” Supposedly, the animal is dead before it’s sent to the meat butcher, but this isn’t always the case. Animals are sometimes skinned, gutted, or dismembered while they’re still alive. Hogs are sometimes boiled alive. The slaughtering process is done so quickly that line workers and the meat butcher don’t always wait for the animals to be dead before they start hacking them up.
Another method of slaughter is the captive-bolt pistol. With this method, a heavy metal rod is shot into the animal’s forehead to render it unconscious. This was pretty quick and effective, but after the mad cow disease scare, the penetrating captive-bolt gun was largely discontinued. Since the rod actually penetrated the brain, brain tissue infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) could infect other tissues once it was hit with the steel rod. Now, unfortunately, a less effective type of captive-bolt gun is used – the non-penetrating gun. This type of stunner uses a mushroom-shaped rod to deliver a powerful blow to the animal’s forehead, but it doesn’t penetrate. As a result, animals are not always rendered unconscious. And even those that are sometimes don’t remain unconscious for very long. Animals with thick hair and thick skulls are especially immune to unconsciousness from a non-penetrating captive-bolt pistol. These poor abused animals have to suffer the tortures of the slaughter process while fully aware of what’s going on.
Kosher meat and halal meat
Even worse are the slaughter practices in some religions. According to kashrut (Jewish) and halal (Muslim) religious laws, the animals cannot be stunned at all. They have to be conscious at the point of death, when their carotid artery is cut. I totally do not understand the reasoning behind this! It doesn’t seem like kosher meat should be obtained this way. We usually think of “kosher” being a positive term. This isn’t the case with kosher meat, however.
Save the animals from torture
There just has to be a better, more humane way! Can’t we save the animals we eat from an agonizing death? Why can’t animals meant for human consumption be euthanized? I’m not a scientist, a doctor, or a biologist, so I have no idea whether or not lethal doses of drugs would affect the muscle tissue of the animal and be harmful to humans. But what about carbon monoxide? Would animals killed by carbon monoxide inhalation be safe for humans to consume?
Okay, let’s just say for now that meat from a cow or pig killed by carbon monoxide or drugs is perfectly safe for the dinner table. The process would be much slower for the meat butcher, which means that the meat would be more expensive for packers to obtain and more expensive for consumers in the grocery stores. So what? I’d be willing to pay a little more for meat if it meant that the animals didn’t have to suffer the cruel practices of the typical slaughter house. And I know that I’m not alone here.
According to Gandhi, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” If that’s the case, my fellow Americans, we’re a country of barbarians!

Learn more about Global Warming

 

 

Learn More

The results are in and the reality of global warming is beyond dispute or debate. It’s not just an environmental issue. It affects our public health and national security. It’s an urgent matter of survival for everyone on the planet — the most urgent threat facing humanity today. It’s going to take action from you and all of us working together.
The first step, Join the Virtual March.
The second step, Keep reading below, and share this with friends.
Global warming isn’t opinion. It’s a scientific reality. And the science tells us that human activity has made enormous impacts to our planet that affect our well-being and even our survival as a species.
The world’s leading science journals report that glaciers are melting ten times faster than previously thought, that atmospheric greenhouse gases have reached levels not seen for millions of years, and that species are vanishing as a result of climate change. They also report of extreme weather events, long-term droughts, and rising sea levels.
Fortunately, the science also tells us how we can begin to make significant repairs to try and reverse those impacts, but only through immediate action. That’s why we urge you to join us. The Stop Global Warming Virtual March is virtual but its purpose is real. By spreading the word and sharing this with others, our collective power will force governments, corporations, and politicians everywhere to pay attention.

What is Global Warming?

The Earth as an ecosystem is changing, attributable in great part to the effects of globalization and man. More carbon dioxide is now in the atmosphere than has been in the past 650,000 years. This carbon stays in the atmosphere, acts like a warm blanket, and holds in the heat — hence the name ‘global warming.’
The reason we exist on this planet is because the earth naturally traps just enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the temperature within a very narrow range – this creates the conditions that give us breathable air, clean water, and the weather we depend on to survive. Human beings have begun to tip that balance. We’ve overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses from our cars and factories and power plants. If we don’t start fixing the problem now, we’re in for devastating changes to our environment. We will experience extreme temperatures, rises in sea levels, and storms of unimaginable destructive fury. Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace.

Environmental Destruction

The massive ice sheets in the Arctic are melting at alarming rates. This is causing the oceans to rise. That’s how big these ice sheets are! Most of the world’s population lives on or near the coasts. Rising ocean levels, an estimated six feet over the next 100 years or sooner, will cause massive devastation and economic catastrophe to population centers worldwide.
The United States, with only four percent of the world’s population, is responsible for 22% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. A rapid transition to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources will combat global warming, protect human health, create new jobs, protect habitat and wildlife, and ensure a secure, affordable energy future.

Health Risks

Malaria. Dengue Fever. Encephalitis. These names are not usually heard in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices in the United States. But if we don’t act to curb global warming, they will be. As temperatures rise, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people in their wake. Doctors at the Harvard Medical School have linked recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, hantavirus and other diseases directly to climate change.

Catastrophic Weather

Super powerful hurricanes, fueled by warmer ocean temperatures are the “smoking gun” of global warming. Since 1970, the number of category 4 and 5 events has jumped sharply. Human activities are adding an alarming amount of pollution to the earth’s atmosphere causing catastrophic shifts in weather patterns. These shifts are causing severe heat, floods and worse.

Five Things We Can All Do

• Join StopGlobalWarming.org. Together our voices will be heard!
• Spread the word, share the learning. Send this link to family, friends, and colleagues. Share why this is so important.
• Change begins at home. (See our Action Items list)
• Put the heat on your elected officials to support legislation to stop global warming.
• The power of the pocketbook; buy green products and donate to environmental organizations.

Arctic Melt Down Is Bringing Harder Winters and Permanently Altering Weather Patterns

Last year’s cold and snowy winter directly connected to warmer Arctic new research reveals

By Stephen Leahy

OSLO, 15 Jun (IPS)
Last winter’s big snowfall and cold temperatures in the eastern United States and Europe were likely caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, researchers concluded at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway in June.
Climate change has warmed the entire Arctic region, melting 2.5 million square kilometres of sea ice, and that, paradoxically, is producing colder and snowier winters for Europe, Asia and parts of North America.
“The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” said James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States.
“In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception” in these regions, Overland told IPS.
Scientists have been surprised by the rapid warming of the Arctic, where annual temperatures have increased two to three times faster than the global average. In one part of the Arctic, over the Barents and Karas Seas north of Scandinavia, average annual temperatures are now 10 degrees C higher than they were in 1990.
Is this article of interest? It exists thanks to contributions from readers. Please click here to learn more about Community Supported Journalism.
Overland explains the warming of the Arctic as the result of a combination of climate change, natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns, which has disrupted the stability of the Arctic climate system. In just 30 years, all that extra heat has shrunk the Arctic’s thick blanket of ice by 2.5 million square kilometres – an area equivalent to more than one quarter the size of the continental U.S.
The changes in the Arctic are now irreversible, he said.“This is a very big change for the entire planet,” said David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada. The planet’s cold polar regions are crucial drivers of Earth’s weather and climate.
“It has been one million years, some think 14 million years, since the Arctic was ice-free,” Barber told the more than 2,300 researchers in Oslo at the largest-ever gathering of the polar-science community.
The International Polar Year (IPY), which just ended with the Oslo Science conference last weekend, involved more than 50,000 scientists from 60 countries conducting 30 months of unprecedented research at both poles. The last IPY was 50 years ago and led to the creation of the Antarctic Treaty to protect the southern polar region.
“Much of the remaining ice in the Beaufort Sea is rotten,” said Barber, who spent long periods on research icebreakers in the region. Such vessels can only break through ice a little over a metre thick but they were plowing through multi-year ice 14 metres thick, he said.
“We watched a piece of ice the size of Manhattan break up right before our eyes,” Barber said.
Although the ice recovers in winter and satellites recorded a full recovery this past winter, in reality much of it was a thin layer of ice on top of old rotten ice, he said. That explains the rapid decline already this year, a near-record low for May. At the end of the Arctic summer, the decline will likely come close to setting another new record, many here said.
Barber says an ice-free summer may be just three or four years away, when icebreakers will no longer be needed to navigate the region.
“The ice pack looks like Swiss cheese,” agreed Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado.
“It is inescapable this will be another very low year (in terms of ice extent),” Serreze told IPS.

With ever more open water absorbing the sun’s heat, the Arctic Ocean is warming up, melting more ice in a positive feedback loop. A day of 24-hour summer sun in the Arctic puts more heat on the surface than a day in the tropics, said Overland. That extra heat in the ocean is gradually released into the lower atmosphere from October to January as the region re-freezes during the 24-hour nights.
Temperatures in January were -2C over the water, while the land was -25C, making conditions far windier and producing more snowfall than normal. Heavy snow on the remaining ice insulates it from the cold air, preventing it from thickening during the long winter.
“Sea ice is the key system in Arctic. It is just like a tropical forest…if the forest is cut down it affects the entire food web,” Barber said.
Not only does the loss of ice affect conditions locally but “what happens in the Arctic dictates some of what happens in the mid-latitudes,” he added.
This huge mass of warmer air over the Arctic in the late fall not only generates more wind and snow locally, several studies have now documented the impacts on global weather patterns.
The winter of 2005-6 was the coldest in 50 years in Japan and eastern Eurasia, reported Meiji Honda, a senior scientist with the Climate Diagnosis Group at Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. Honda’s studies show that the air over the Arctic was quite warm in the fall of 2005, which altered normal wind patterns, pushing the jet stream further south and bringing arctic cold to much of Eurasia and Japan. He also documented the same mechanism for the colder winters of 2007-8 and 2009-10, he told participants.
In eastern North America, the same conditions of 2007-8 produced increased precipitation and colder temperatures in the winter. As the sea ice declines, big impacts are likely to be seen in this region, said Sara Strey of the University of Illinois.
Another “wild card” in terms of effects from the Arctic warming is how much and how fast the region’s permafrost – permanently frozen landscape – that contains enormous amounts of carbon and methane will also melt.
“Things have to change in the Arctic but we don’t know what they will all be. That’s the scary part,” said Serreze.
“Our entire infrastructure is based on the status quo,” he said, namely a stable climate of the past 10,000 years. “Change is already here. We must start adapting now. “