This house is air tight and over powered. These are 2 things that really turn me on. A night in that house would be a continous orgasim. Oh and did I mention that the house is in Sweden.

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/blogs/villa-%C3%A5karp-a-super-efficient-home-that-scores-an-a-in-surplus-ene

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Go there and then to the original to read. More tomorrow.

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The more things change the more they stay the same. This Blog for instance will change at the beginning of the year. I am going to seek full time employment after working on Community Energy Systems for 6 years. I do not really know what that means. It could mean as little as 1 post a week. In an emergency like Katrina or the Gulf Oil Spew it could mean daily for awhile. Today I leave you with something I have seen up close and personal, the ancient Bristle Cone Pine tree.

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/oldest-living-tree-tells-all/

Read My Rings: The Oldest Living Tree Tells All

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford

n 1964, a geologist in the Nevada wilderness discovered the oldest living thing on earth, after he killed it. The young man was Donald Rusk Currey, a graduate student studying ice-age glaciology in Eastern Nevada; the tree he cut down was of the Pinus longaevaspecies, also known as the Great Basin bristlecone pine. Working on a grant from the National Science Foundation, Currey was compiling the ages of ancient bristlecone trees to develop a glacial timeline for the region.

“Bristlecones are slow-growing and conservative, not the grow-fast, die-young types.”

Currey’s ring count for this particular tree reached backward from the present, past the founding of the United States, the Great Crusades, and even the Greek and Roman Empires, to the time of the ancient Egyptians. Sheltered in an unremarkable grove near Wheeler Peak, the bristlecone he cut down was found to be nearly 5,000 years old, taking root only a few hundred years after human history was first recorded. How could a half-dead pine barely 20 feet tall outdo the skyscraper-height sequoias, commonly thought to be the oldest trees alive?

The longevity of Great Basin bristlecones was first recognized in the 1950s by Dr. Edward Schulman, who shocked a scientific community that believed in a correlation between long lifespan and great size. Schulman systematically sampled Great Basin bristlecones in California and Nevada, and published his findings in a 1958 National Geographic article, which revealed several of the trees to be more than 4,000 years old. Schulman’s analysis supported the idea that “adversity begets longevity,” or that the severe conditions in which the bristlecone pine evolved actually helped extend its lifespan.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Not much to say about this. Conference summaries are always difficult to interpret. You miss all the personal conversations, updates, and sense of the future. Still it is a snapshot.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Utility-Scale-PV-Developers-Confront-Future-of-Solar-Project-Business

Utility-Scale PV Developers Confront Future of Solar Project Business

They want the “doable renewables.”

Herman K. Trabish: November 1, 2012

Building utility-scale PV solar projects is getting tougher. Greentech Media’s U.S. Solar Market Insight conference concluded with a discussion between experienced developers about the challenges and opportunities.

Moderator and GTM Research Senior Analyst Shyam Mehta asked them to first review the last year.

“In summer of last year, the IOUs issued RFPs, the first in over two years,” 8minutenergy CEO Martin Hermann recalled. “More than 70,000 megawatts of applications were submitted. They shortlisted about 2,500 megawatts.”

The ISO queue has dropped from 80,000 megawatts to 50,000 megawatts and utilities are “looking very diligently to see if there are any show stoppers” before signing contracts. In this “tough competition for PPAs,” Hermann said, developers are “monetizing or cancelling their portfolios.”

In three years, explained SunEdison (NYSE:WFR) General Manager Attila Toth, the U.S. solar market will be 50 percent distributed generation and 50 percent utility scale projects. But about 85 percent of the 3.5 gigawatts to 3.8 gigawatts of utility projects “is already spoken for, in the queues and has company’s names written on it. There is a very limited opportunity in the utility segment.”

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Go there and read. More next week.

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This article represents public policy that could make a difference.

http://www.denverpost.com/energy/ci_21759106/plan-streamline-solar-development-west-okd

Plan to streamline solar development in West OK’d

SAN FRANCISCO—Federal officials on Friday approved a plan that sets aside 445 square miles of public land for the development of large-scale solar power plants, cementing a new government approach to renewable energy development in the West after years of delays and false starts.

At a news conference in Las Vegas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the new plan a “roadmap … that will lead to faster, smarter utility-scale solar development on public lands.”

The plan replaces the department’s previous first-come, first-served system of approving solar projects, which let developers choose where they wanted to build utility-scale solar sites and allowed for land speculation.

The department no longer will decide projects within the zones on a case-by-case basis as it had since 2005, when solar developers began filing applications. Instead, the department will direct development to land it has identified as having fewer wildlife and natural-resource obstacles.

The government is establishing 17 new “solar energy zones” on 285,000 acres in six states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. More than half of the land—153,627 acres—is in Southern California.

When I played at being deaf, it was surreal. They challenged us to try to participate in a activity while experiencing one of the handicapped conditions. I was hungry and they did not provide lunch so I went to the student cafeteria and ordered as best I could by speaking, but there were a few things I had to write down. I also smacked into people a couple of times because I could not hear people coming at me. To top it all off it made the room all bright and glarey. Some kind of weird sensory enhancement I guess. Anyway it was pretty cool. This post is not about hearing however, it is about Bathroom Safety Products.

  http://www.easierliving.com/all-products/bathroom-safety-hygiene/default.aspx

	Bathtub & Shower Safety
	The bathroom can be a dangerous place for anyone, let alone someone with a disability or limited strength and balance. Make you or your loved one’s bathroom safer with our selection of bath grab bars, safety rails, shower seats and more bathroom safety products.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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This a truly amazing site.

http://www.earth.org/about

But I can’t post any of it here.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Unlike some environmental groups, they first do no harm. And they do not support quackery. You go guys.

http://www.audubon.org/newsroom/news-stories/2012/because-conservation-doesnt-have-party

Because Conservation Doesn’t Have a Party

By Audubon President & CEO David Yarnold

Published: Oct 16, 2012

You have to get out of shouting range of the politicians in Washington to appreciate what’s really important to Americans.  Americans like Barbra from Arizona: “‘Environment’ is not a swear word, but too often it is treated like one in the halls of our legislatures.”

Barbra is one of thousands of Americans — Republicans, Democrats and independents — who have joined a national grassroots conversation aimed at taking the politics out of conservation and returning preservation of our wilderness land, waterways and wildlife to its original roots as a unifying, rather than divisive force in America.

Judging from responses from all across America, perhaps we are not a nation as divided as our political leaders would like us believe. We’ve heard from angry Republicans.  “Since when did breathing clean fresh air, drinking pure clean water and protecting our precious natural resources and environment become something that only Democrats should value?” wrote Lorrie from Pennsylvania.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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These type organizations when founded (1987) were founded for “the long haul”. The belief was then that Humans might damage the Earth but not destroy it. Well here we are,  when it looks like that Humans may kill off themselves and maybe permanently in some respects changing the Earth, and these organizations sort of plod on. They need to pick up the pace. While I understand the desire to do good work in the 3rd world. They may want to back down the 1st world countries first.

http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx

Two Conservation International Leaders Honored by World’s Top Conservationists

Jeju, South Korea – Conservation International’s long time President, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, a world-renowned  primatologist, herpetologist and conservationist, was granted Honorary Membership today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest international environmental organization. The award was presented at the World Conservation Congress taking place this week in South Korea, on the recommendation of the IUCN Council to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to conservation.

“Russ Mittermeier is an innovative, proactive and scientifically informed conservationist,” declared IUCN on its website.  “A renowned primatologist and herpetologist, he has undertaken extensive field work and made major contributions to the conservation of the fauna of Madagascar, the fauna of South America (especially in Brazil and the Guianas), primates in general, and freshwater turtles worldwide.”

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go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The U.N does a whole lot of good. It does not balance out the bad that humans do to each other and to the planet. Not even close, but they are trying. Again in third world countries no less.

http://www.unep.org/

Afghanistan, UNEP Launch USD $6 Million Initiative to Help Communities Adapt to Effects of Climate Change

Bamyan, Afghanistan, 11 October 2012 – The Government of Afghanistan, through its National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), has launched a USD $6 million climate change initiative, the first of its kind in the country’s history.

This landmark scheme – to be implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded mainly by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – aims to help communities that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as drought, and to build the capacity of Afghan institutions to address climate change risk.

“The Government of Afghanistan is showing a remarkable commitment to working with communities for a landscape approach to dealing with climate change in the country,” said Michael Keating, UN Afghanistan Resident Coordinator, speaking from Bamyan in the Central Highlands, some 200km west of Kabul.

“We also welcome the opportunity to help Afghan institutions better deal with shocks and hazards, and increase resilience at a decentralized level,” he added.

UNEP identified Afghanistan as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, because of the potential impacts and its current limited capacity to react to these impacts. Climate change adaptation is especially important in developing nations, since those countries are predicted to bear the brunt of climate change effects. The overarching goal is to reduce the vulnerability of biological systems to these impacts.

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