Nuclear Power Too Cheap To Meter – Forty years later

Why in the world would you want to fuel up a 40 year old reactor. Because it is a religious dictatorship and the ayatollahs can order it to be done. It is Allah’s will. Allah definitely has a sense of humor.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-nuclear-20101027,0,1194581.storyIran begins fueling nuclear reactor

Iran begins fueling nuclear reactor

The start of the weeks-long process brings the controversial Bushehr plant another step closer to operation. Iran says the facility will generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity, but Western nations fear it is to be used to produce atomic weapons.

Nuclear power plantIran’s controversial nuclear plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr. The country has begun a weeks-long process to fuel its reactor. (Majid Asgaripour / AFP Getty Images)
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles TimesOctober 26, 2010|6:53 a.m.
Reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates —

Iran began loading nuclear fuel rods into the core of its first nuclear power plant Tuesday, bringing the facility a step closer to producing electricity, Iranian state television reported.

The start of the weeks-long process lends credence to Iranian claims that a high-profile computer virus attack earlier this year did not significantly postpone the launch of the nuclear plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr. After years of delay, the plant, built in part by Russian engineers, is scheduled to produce electricity early next year, after all 163 of its fuel rods are moved into the reactor core and undergo tests.

“We hope that nuclear electricity would enter the national grid within the next three months,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency

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More tomorrow.

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St. John’s Hospital Is Building Green – But how green is that?

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-7175-getting-bigger-going-green.html

Thursday, April 8,2010

Getting bigger, going green

St. John’s expansion will be environmentally friendly

By Patrick Yeagle

As St. John’s Hospital is preparing to renovate its downtown campus, the 135-year-old Springfield institution is paying special attention to minimizing the project’s environmental footprint and maximizing local economic benefits.

On March 31, hospital officials announced a $162 million proposal to demolish certain old structures on the hospital’s campus and replace them with more modern surgery, pharmacy and patient areas.

Dave Olejniczak, chief operating officer at St. John’s, says the project will incorporate several cost-saving, environmentally friendly designs, such as paints, stains and adhesives with low toxin levels, energy-efficient light fixtures and natural lighting whenever possible.

“A little bit of it is an investment up front, but the majority of it is going to be a cost savings down the road, in particular when we focus on the glass elements around the facility itself,” he says. “With having the natural light, it’s going to reduce the amount of artificial light we have to generate.”

Recycling is a big part of the design as well. From the carpet made of recycled fibers to the reuse of scrap materials such as steel and wood, Olejniczak says the project will uphold the hospital’s “stewardship values.”

“Envitronmental stewardship, from a Fransiscan perspective, is ensuring that we’re using the resources that we’re currently given to the best of our ability, and to take what we have and reuse it or recycle it,” Olejniczak said.

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To which I said:

Editor

Illinois Times

1320 S. State Street

PO Box 5256

Springfield, IL  62705

Emailed: 4/12/10

editor@illinoistimes.com

Dear Editor:

I am writing to you regarding your brief article about St. John Hospital’s future building plans. It is laudable that they plan on making that building locally built and green. However I did not hear “state-of-the-art” speak included in that admittedly short article. First and foremost I hope the Hospital will perform a green tear down. We should be wasting as little as possible these days. Putting perfectly good materials in the landfill is no longer acceptable.

Second I hope they also perform a green rebuild so that everything in the new Hospital wing will be recycled. Finally I hope that the new wing will generate its own energy and be super efficient in its energy usage. If they use windows, please use windows that generate electricity. If they have a roof I hope that it has wind turbines on top and plenty of plants to absorb the water that lands there. I hope that they put in geothermal heating and cooling systems. This is after all about people’s health. If St. Johns becomes a beacon of how we can lead our lives without pollutants then they will be contributing to the over all health of our community.

As the article pointed out it is also about health care costs. Industry estimates are that if the medical community used energy efficiently they could cut our medical cost by 10 to 15%. That would be a huge benefit to us all.

Doug Nicodemus

948 E. Adams

Riverton, Il  62561

day) 6297031

email dougnic55@yahoo.com

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If you want to read more about healthcare you might look here:

http://mastersofpublichealth.org/top-50-public-health-blogs.html

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Healthcare And Alternative Energy – If a Bank can do it why not a Hospital

it’s jam band friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2EQ7YXork

Way to go Farmers Bank. They put up a Wind Turbine in Mt. Pulaski. When you think about it, Hospitals manytimes have some of the tallest buildings in town and the most financial muscle around. So why don’t they all sprout wind turbines and solar panels? Please see yesterdays Post.

http://www.lincolncourier.com/homepage/x1499086608/Wind-blows-energy-to-area-bank

Wind blows energy to area bank


Mount Pulaski wind
By Justin L. Fowler/GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Crews work to install the blades on a 10,000-watt wind turbine being installed to help power the Farmers Bank of Mount Pulaski on the city square in Mount Pulask Wednesday.
By John Reynolds
GateHouse News Service
Thu Mar 25, 2010, 06:05 AM CDT

Mount Pulaski, Ill. –

A high-tech wind turbine that can generate 10,000 watts of power was installed near Logan County’s oldest bank Wednesday.

The turbine, which sits atop a 120-foot tower, will supply about half, or possibly more than half, of the electricity used by Farmers Bank of Mount Pulaski.

The apparatus cost about $65,000, some of which will be offset by tax credits, said Rick Volle, president of Farmers Bank, which was established in 1872.

“There’s a lot of these going up on a larger scale. We think it’s something worth doing,” Volle said. “…We are figuring about a 12-year payoff on it, and it has a life of about 30 years.”

Installation of the turbine on the square in Mount Pulaski drew a crowd of about two-dozen people. They watched as a crane lifted the tower into the air and workmen slowly moved the base over to a concrete pad. The turbine, complete with blades, was already installed on top.

By 12:15 p.m., the tower and turbine were in place. It now stands across the street from the historic Mount Pulaski Courthouse where Abraham Lincoln argued cases.

“I guess it’s progress for our town, and the bank in particular,” said Mike Cyrulik, who watched the work from across the street. “I think it’s going to be a great addition to town.”

Cyrulik was one of the first people to stop and watch. When the big crane took over, more people came out from downtown shops to see the tower rise into the air.

“It’s pretty interesting for a little town,” Cyrulik said.

Mount Pulaski, about 25 miles northeast of Springfield, sits on a hill that rises above the surrounding farmland.

John Wyss, owner of Central Illinois Wind and Solar, the company that installed the turbine, said downtown Mount Pulaski is a good spot for the new technology.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVtCdZLtCj4 )

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Some progressive hospitals are catching on.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tFX51imvQ )

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2008/12/ann_arbor_veteran_affairs_hosp.html

Ann Arbor Veteran Affairs hospital gets wind turbine

By Steve Pepple

December 02, 2008, 7:06AM
Eliyahu Gurfinkel | The Ann Arbor NewsDarryl Snabes, left, and Jeff Means are responsible for the installation of a wind turbine on the roof of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System building. Snabes is the local project manager and Means the regional energy manager at the VA.

A small wind turbine now spins atop the Ann Arbor Veteran Affairs hospital, contributing to the hospital’s utility needs while satisfying a new federal requirement for renewable energy.

Hospital administrators installed the vertical turbine last month as part of an ongoing plan to generate about 7.5 percent of the hospital’s energy needs from renewable energy, including wind and solar, by 2012.

“It’s a baby step, but we’re optimistic,” said Jeff Means, energy manager for VA hospitals in Michigan and nearby states.

The turbine and its installation cost about $100,000. If it is successful in generating enough energy, the hospital could install additional turbines and solar panels to generate energy, Means said.

The turbine, which weighs about 1,000 pounds, is 16 feet tall and 3 feet wide. As the wind spins the vertical turbine, a generator in its base sends direct electrical current through several boxes to transform the power into alternating current to be used by the hospital.

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There’s a strong wind agona blow.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tFX51imvQ )

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Cutting Healthcare’s Enormous Energy Waste – This article is not on topic BUT

I had originally planned on taking a look at how much an X-Ray costs in energy terms. The Healthcare industry sucks up huge amounts of energy. Another thing I planned on looking at is their huge computer usage. Like utility companies, hospitals are nothing but giant billing agencies, add to that all of the data they must store and a hospital has got to be gulping the juice. This articles points out that ALL BURNING Behavior is much like most medical behavior, just plain sloppy living.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907514,00.html

The Key to Fixing Health Care and Energy: Use Less

Our health-care crisis and our energy crisis are complex dilemmas made of many complex problems. But our biggest problem in both health care and energy is essentially the same simple problem: we use too much. And in both cases, there’s a simple explanation for much of the problem: our providers get paid more when we use more.

Undoing these waste-promoting incentives — the “fee-for-service” payment system that awards more fees to doctors and hospitals for providing more services, and the regulated electricity rates that reward utilities for selling more power and building more plants — would not solve all our health-care and energy problems. But it would be a major step in the right direction. President Obama has pledged to pass massive overhauls of both sectors this year, but if Congress lacks the stomach for comprehensive reforms — and these days it’s looking like Kate Moss in the stomach department — a more modest effort to realign perverse incentives could take a serious bite out of both crises. (See pictures of Cleveland’s smart approach to health care.)

Everyone knows we use too much energy. Our addiction to fossil fuels is torching the planet, empowering hostile petro-states and straining our wallets. Meanwhile, studies by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere suggest that more than half of our energy is lost through inefficiencies, calculations that don’t even include the energy we fritter away through wasteful behavior like leaving lights on or idling cars. We’re on course to increase electricity usage an extra 30% by 2030, which could require trillions of dollars’ worth of new emissions-belching power plants, so it would be much better to eliminate the usage that doesn’t add to our quality of life.

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Please read the rest of the brief article. It is thought provoking.

More on Green Medical Technology tomorrow.

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Doing Your Own Energy Audit – Try some incense

So far our doityourself audit has consisted of  listing your major energy users, checking their condition and cleaning their filters, checking the ductwork for leaks (at least the ductwork you can get at) and spending some time cleaning out the coils on your refrigerator and freezer. Now we are going to check the house for air leaks. The first and easiest thing to do is walk around the house and simply look for obvious leaks. These would be where any outside service enters the house. Examples would be where your water pipes, electrical wires, phone wires and cable wires enter the house. They should all be sealed tight. If not buy a caulk gun and some caulk and seal them up.

http://www.essortment.com/home/caulkingtipsdo_seay.htm

If you do not know how to caulk, starting outside is easier because you do not have worry so much about the mess and you can wipe your hands on the grass. Also check around all of your windows and doors and vents to make sure they are sealed. If they are not sealed, do not seal those right away. Next we go buy some incense and go back indoors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incense

Congratulations by the way. You have joined the green economy. Now we are going to conduct a house purification ritual from the ancient religion of conservatorium. The reason why I did not have you seal your windows and doors on the outside is because it makes it easier to find the leaks on the inside if they are not plugged. Also it is best that you do this next step when it is pretty windy and preferably cold or hot. So light your incense stick and let it get smokey. Walk around the room very slowly holding the incense stick very close to the wall and chat “I save money” over and over again”. Stop every couple of feet and watch the smoke. If it moves anywhere but up you have a potential leak. Stick a Postit Note next to it and move on (or mark it with a pen or a pencil that is easily removed).

http://homerepair.about.com/od/exteriorhomerepair/ss/winterize_7.htm

Infiltration of cold air from air leaks around doors and windows is as significant a contributor to your heating bill as is poor insulation in the walls and ceiling. An easy way to reduce you heating bill is to reduce these drafts with simple weatherstripping.

Windows

  • On a day when it’s windy outside, close your windows and feel for air leaks. You can use an incense stick for this too if you don’t mind the smell. Watch the smoke trail and if it becomes anything other than vertical, you have an air leak. Typically air leaks will be at the edges where the window is hinged, slides or meets another unit, such as between the two panels of a double hung window.
  • Although you can tape plastic over the windows to seal them, this can be expensive and look bad. It can also reduce much needed light in the winter unless you use the shrink-wrap type of plastic seal. So a better and easier solution is to use inexpensive rope caulk.
  • Press the rope caulk into all the joints where air is leaking.

Doors

The easiest fix here is to check for weatherstripping on the side and bottoms of the doors. Install weatherstripping on any leaking doors.

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http://buildipedia.com/channels/at-home/item/892-winterizing-your-home

  • Walls
    • Inspect for air leakage on the inside of the home.  A candle or incense stick can be used to help locate the air leaks.  Flame or smoke will be noticeably directed away from the location where air leaks are occurring.  If necessary, insulate or seal air leaks around doors, windows, outlets, and other penetrations where air leaks are occurring.

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http://www.valuhomecenters.com/winterize.asp

Winterizing Your Home Tip #4: Weatherstrip Doors and Windows

On a day when it’s windy outside, close your windows and feel for air leaks. You can use an incense stick for this too if you don’t mind the smell. Watch the smoke trail and if it becomes anything other than vertical, you have an air leak. Typically air leaks will be at the edges where the window is hinged, slides or meets another unit, such as between the two panels of a double hung window. The easiest fix here is to check for weatherstripping on the side and bottoms of the doors. Install weatherstripping on any leaking doors.

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Go ahead and caulk the air leaks that you find that can be handled using that material. This would be typically around windows and doors, along floors and baseboards and around some ceiling fixtures. We will talk about windows, doors and outlets tomorrow.

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Top 50 Environmental Blogs – Going where no man has gone before

Let me start with a little house keeping. By my count and it is the only one the matters I have posted 24 Environmental Blogs that I think are the best on the planet and a little chunk of each blog. This includes 4 lists of Blogs many of whom I did not think were all that great or at least belong say in the last 25 of the best. I also included one Blog that has not been updated for nearly a year. However its content is still one of the best on topic – in this case Biomass. I do not even know if that person died, got bored or got a real job and I do not really care.

Today we tackle the issue of disposable diapers or more importantly Mothers and Babies. There is nothing more dangerous then to comment on women pumped on hormones or little cute tikes. Also HUGE disclaimer, I have no kids. I must say however that Disposable Diapers are just wrong. Before elaborating, first I must say:

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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.

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To continue this rant, first using oil for anything should be carefully regulated. IT IS A FINITE RESOURCE. We need it for things like Moon Rocket Parts, and medicines. Not plastic shopping bags and disposable diapers. Second the garbage dump is the last place for feces and urine (pay attention pet owners). We have elaborate water treatment plants set up to handle that stuff and that is where it should go. This is no “carbon” argument. Washing and drying diapers takes a lot of energy. Even if you use a clothesline to dry them it is still a huge energy bite. I am not unmindful of the labor that this requires for already harried mothers BUT making them out of biodegradable materials doesn’t solve the problem. 14 cloth diapers should get a kid to other forms of underwear and they probably should last through 2 kids, so there! I have said my piece. Plus if we were using all the pee and poo that exists on this planet to fertilize the Earth we would be off of oil based fertilizers all together but we would have to create a system for that with careful monitoring…People really do learn to “throw stuff away” and “burn stuff up” at an early age.

OK so back to what I call Mommy sites BUT many people call Parenting Sites:

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Here is a list:

http://www.reducereuserecycle.co.uk/greendirectory/kids_green_sites.php

Here is another list:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/organic-parenting/7701

I by the way like the Green Daily people a lot but they are awfully pure. Here is another:

http://www.wellsphere.com/wellpage/green-infant

I will give you 4 sites that I like and you can go from there

http://www.gogreenbabyshop.com/

Welcome to Our New Website!!

If you’re new to Go Green Baby Co. (GGBC) – please take a moment to learn more ‘about us‘. We are a family owned retail store in Salisbury, MD. We compiled all of our favorite natural & organic baby products and put them all in one place for you.

We’re so excited to bring you so many new products. We have the BRAND NEW Thirsties Duo Diaper…this is a fabulous new diaper! The FlipEconobum diapers are IN STOCK! Smartipants?! They’re in stock too! Kate Quinn Fall/Winter collection is here and so is Under the Nile’s fabulous Fall line along with brand new plush toys. Looking for holiday gifts? We just re-stocked all Plan Toys!!

Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter!

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Why do I like them? They sell cloth diapers right up front. Next up

http://www.greatgreenbaby.com/

Bamboo-Baby-Cap-2

This isn’t a cap for bamboo babies as the title might suggest, but a baby cap manufactured from 95% bamboo.

The big advantages of bamboo are it’s antimicrobial properties as well as giving protection to 98% of harmful UV rays.

Apart from that, they stay in place on the head and they look great.

Available from Babybambu

Price $5

http://www.babybambu.com/Bamboo-Baby-Hat-p/bamboo-baby-cap.htm

This isn’t a cap for bamboo babies as the title might suggest, but a baby cap manufactured from 95% bamboo.

The big advantages of bamboo are it’s antimicrobial properties as well as giving protection to 98% of harmful UV rays.

Apart from that, they stay in place on the head and they look great.

Available from Babybambu

Price $5

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Why do I like them besides the Bamboo cuddly apparel. they suck on ever nuck before they recommend them. Next up:

http://mindfulmomma.typepad.com/

Fair Trade Gift Ideas + $165 Worth of Giveaways!!

As you rack your brain trying to come up with the ‘perfect’ gift for Grandma or that little something for your favorite babysitter, it’s important to remember that there is more to gift giving than the gift itself. There are people behind the gift.  People who work in the fields, operate machines, package it up and send it on its merry way.

So when you make a purchase, you’re really making 2 decisions.  One for the gift itself and the other for the manner in which it was made.  When you buy Fair Trade you can be assured that the people who made the product were treated fairly and the process was an equitable one.  Some of the benefits for buying Fair Trade include:

  • Fair wages for workers
  • Safe and healthy working conditions
  • Equitable partnerships between producers and marketers
  • Long-term working relationships
  • Environmentally sustainable practices followed

To create a little excitement about buying Fair Trade, I contacted some of my favorite Fair Trade vendors about doing a giveaway.  And WOW did they ever come through with some wonderful prizes!!  Read on to learn out about these terrific companies and some of the really great Fair Trade products they have to offer.

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Fair Trade and Babies? WOW Finally:

http://eco-chick.com/ Eco-Chick · The modern girl’s guide to living green & fabulous.

Smoky Eyes How To with Christopher Drummond Natural Makeup

^ More

Into the Hermitage: Low-Impact Gypsy Life on the Road

Comments No Comments

by Stephanie Rogers · 12/07/09

hermitage-1

Few of us can even begin to imagine whittling our possessions down to just a few boxes full of items and living in a room that measures barely eight feet wide. But what if that room was a recycled gypsy home on wheels, with an ever-changing view of the Scottish countryside out of reclaimed leaded glass church windows?

Welcome to the utterly enchanting reality of artist Rima Staines and her partner Tui, a musician. The talented pair live a nomadic existence in their wooden horse box turned charming miniature home, complete with a double bed, rows of bookshelves and a wood stove – all documented on their blog, Into the Hermitage.

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OK everyone is going to holler, the Eco-Chick has nothing to do with babies, or being a mother or educational programs for kids. To them I say, Exactly. There is more to being a woman then being a mother. Eco-Chick is slick, entertaining, sophisticated and FUN. Every Mother (excuse me) Parent should have one.

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No Impact Man Slips A Little But That Is To Be Expected – It’s like losing weight

I know at first this story won’t seem to have much to do with the post that follows, but I wanted to lose weight one day. I did not need to. I am 6’3″ and 180 pounds. (blush on my drivers license it says 165) So I cut back on ye old intake. All I really wanted to do was drop 5 lbs. to 175 because my pants were getting a little tight in the waste (sorry waist). In a couple of weeks I got down to 176 lbs. I got distracted. An environmental issue got hot and I just lost track. When I got back to thinking about how much I weighed, I got on the scales and I weighed 180.5 lbs. In a week even though I cut down some I was at 182! In was then that I became very aware of the theory of “set points” and what happens when you disturb them…

Anyway you must remember the No Impact Guy…I did a post on him last year:

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/

Join No Impact Week video discussions here!

Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger.com, is participating in No Impact week, starting October 18, and he wrote on the Huffington Post:

Instead of edicts – depriving you of your car or forbidding drinking your latte from a paper cup – the No-Impact week brought to you by Colin Beavan and Huff Po is instead the opportunity to try out lifestyle strategies that just may be more fun than you thought.

With the shape of the earth and our complex society, we need lots of people coming up with lots of approaches.

I look at No-Impact week as carbon-cleansing experiment in which I get to see which of my lifestyle choices actually contribute to my happiness.

He’s right of course!  So join in!

Meanwhile, we’ll be having online video conversations every night of the week starting on Sunday at 5 PM EST, so tune in below. Sunday’s chat will be with Wood Turner of Climate’s Count on the topic of consumption and Monday’s (at 9PM EST) will be with Bill McKibben of 350 and Betsy Taylor of 1Sky on the topic of trash.

Hope to see you there.

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He had his own blog and organization that the Huffington Post helped start:

What is No Impact Project?

The No Impact Project is an international, environmental, nonprofit project, founded  in the spring of 2009. It was inspired by the No Impact Man book, film, and blog.

Mission

To empower citizens to make choices which better their lives and lower their environmental impact through lifestyle change, community action, and participation in environmental politics.

The No Impact Project was conceived by Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, following the success of his blog, book, and film, which chronicle his family’s year-long experiment living a zero-waste lifestyle in New York City. Central to his thesis is the notion that deep-seated individual behavior change leads to both cultural change and political engagement. Living low-impact provides a clear entry point into the environmental movement. This thesis is the bedrock of the No Impact Project.

Goals

  • Promote behavioral change
  • Enable the public to experience their own No Impact Experiment
  • Engage people who are not already tree-hugging, bicycle-riding, canvas-bag-toting, eco-warriors

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He Got a documentary out of it

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1280011/

No Impact Man: The Documentary

MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 23% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Directors:

Laura Gabbert
Justin Schein

Contact:

View company contact information for No Impact Man: The Documentary on IMDbPro.

Genre:

Documentary

Tagline:

Saving the world, one family at a time.

Plot:

Follow the Manhattan-based Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle and try to live a year while making no net environmental impact. | add synopsis

NewsDesk:

Oscilloscope Laboratories plans on Making an ‘Impact’
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Then a book.. or was it the book then the documentary?

http://festival.sundance.org/2009/film_events/films/no_impact_man

NO IMPACT MAN

Then Colin turns things upside down. For his next book, he announces he’s becoming No Impact Man, testing whether making zero environmental impact adversely affects happiness. The hitch is he needs his wife, Michelle—an espresso-guzzling, Prada-worshipping Business Week writer—and their toddler to join the experiment.A year without electricity, cars, toilet paper, and nonlocal food isn’t going to be a walk in the park

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Then he got phat:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33357744/ns/us_news-environment/

After year without, family finds middle ground

No TV? Toilet paper? Perceived sacrifices end up being nothing of the sort

Letting go
When the year was over, Conlin and Beavan didn’t want to set any more rules for themselves. After all the restrictions, they wanted to finally let it all go and see what felt right.

Mostly, they stuck to buying their food at the farmer’s market. But if they were short on groceries after a late night at work, they would stop at the supermarket — despite the packaging on the food on the shelves, despite the distance it had traveled.

While the amount of garbage they produced increased from a single quart every four days to five gallons, this was a far cry from the 90 gallons they produced before the experiment. Their refrigerator is back on, but their freezer is gone.

They started buying olive oil and some seasonings, even though they’re not made nearby. They began saying yes when friends invited them out to dinner. And they started using toilet paper again — but now it was made from recycled paper.

Neither of them wanted to bring back their giant, 46-inch TV. But once a week or so, if they’re in the mood, they’ll watch a drama on a laptop.

It was an obvious choice to keep the rickshaw bikes they’d come to love — three-wheelers with space for groceries and a seat for Isabella. But now, when it rains, they sometimes take the subway.

The air conditioners once seemed like a necessity. But take them away, and the heat and the lack of electronic entertainment drove the family outside, where they spent most evenings at the fountain at Washington Square Park. They cooled off in the mist of the fountain, looked around at the virtual circus of performers who have made the public plaza their stage. They talked with neighbors.

No longer hunkered down in their family’s lonely bubble, they were out in the city. They loved

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So there are HUGE journalist temptations here. MSNBC take the “regaining there balance” approach like they were some extremists and now they have come more to the middle of the road. There are other approaches…like to “laugh and say they were destined to fail”. Or like they do with Ed Begley jr. and twitter like his wife, “isn’t he just the oddest sort”

But fresh off my bout with weight loss I say “way to go” on a tough test, and congratulations on not rebounding too far.

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This Planet Is About Shot – They argue over climate change cause they do not want you to see the big picture

What the Industrialists of the world and their Bankers do not want you to see is  that the oceans are depleted, the atmosphere is seriously screwed up (not just with green house gases), and the land has effectively been stripped. Humanity has literally sucked the resources out of this planet, goaded on by religious and political leaders.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090824001733data_trunc_sys.shtml

24 September 2009
New doomsday map shows planet’s dire state
by Kate Melville

Human activities have already pushed the Earth beyond three of the planet’s biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in Nature. This force has given rise to a new era – Anthropocene – in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change.

“On a finite planet, at some point, we will tip the vital resources we rely upon into irreversible decline if our consumption is not balanced with regenerative and sustainable activity,” says report co-author Sander van der Leeuw, of Arizona State University. The report started with a fairly simple question: How much pressure can the Earth system take before it begins to crash? “Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system’s stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this. We are sending these ideas out to be vetted by the scientific community at large,” explains van der Leeuw. Nine boundaries were identified in the report, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. The study suggests that three of these boundaries -climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere – may already have been transgressed.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers looked at the data for each of the nine vital processes in the Earth system and identified a critical control variable. Biodiversity loss, for example, is based on species extinction rate, which is expressed in extinctions per million species per year. They then explored how the boundaries interact. Here, loss of biodiversity impacts carbon storage (climate change), freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and land systems.

The researchers stress that their approach does not offer a complete roadmap for sustainable development, but does provide an important element by identifying critical planetary boundaries. They also propose a bold move: a limit for each boundary that would maintain the conditions for a livable world. For biodiversity, that would be less than 10 extinctions per million species per year. The current status is greater than 100 species per million lost per year, whereas the pre-industrial value was 0.1-1.

“Three of the boundaries we identify – 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, biodiversity extinction rates more than 10 times the background rate, and no more than 35 million tons of nitrogen pollution per year – have already been exceeded with fossil fuel use, land use change, and agricultural pollution, driving us to unsustainable levels that are producing real risks to our survival,” notes report co-author Diana Liverman, of the University of Arizona.

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We are in the midst of a very large extinction event that we are essentially causing…

Mass extinctions require 2 events. In other words the Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds because of a single event…the comet strike. What happened was they filled every niche, ate themselves out of house and home. Probably started eating themselves, thus the gigantisism movement AND then the comet struck. Humans are heading for the same fate.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html

Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Illustration of Volcanic Eruption

The “Press” | Discovery News Video

 

Feb. 17, 2009 — As agents of extinction, comet and asteroid impacts may be losing their punch.

According to a new theory about how mass dyings work, cosmic collisions generally aren’t enough to cause a major extinction event. To be truly devastating, they must be accompanied by another event that inflicts long-term suffering, like runaway climate change due to massive volcanic eruptions.

In other words, a comet couldn’t have killed the dinosaurs by itself — unless they were already endangered species.

This kind of one-two punch could explain more than the extinction of dinosaurs, Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith Colleges said. In a recent paper in the journal Paleobiology, she and colleague Ian West argue that there are two types of events that can cause extinctions — “pulses” (quick, deadly shocks, like comets) and “presses” (drawn-out stresses that push ecosystems to the brink but may not kill outright, like million-year-long volcanic eruptions).

The chances of mass dyings go way up when both happen together, argues Arens.

 

eruption

WATCH VIDEO: What constitutes a mass extinction?

Related Content:



But are all mass extinctions created equal? Can researchers come up with a “Grand Unified Theory” of ancient apocalypse?West and Arens think so. They combed the last 300 million years of geologic record, noting impact craters, massive eruptions, periods of ancient climate change, and then comparing them to extinctions. The rate at which species die off spiked dramatically, they found, when a “pulse”-type event occurred within a million years or so of a “press.”The theory fits well for the dinosaurs. Around the time of their demise 65 million years ago, a comet slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and a huge volcano, the Deccan Traps, was erupting in what is today India.

But other extinctions are problematic. The greatest dying in geologic history, the Permian-Triassic extinction, killed 90 percent of all life on Earth, but there is no record of an impact. Instead, all signs point to a 200,000-year-long volcanic eruption in Siberia as the murder weapon.

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Tough Decision – My mom is stupid or burning is stupid

OK so Mom wins but let me very quickly qualify that I love my Mother and I mean that unconditionally. My Mom is a rightwing fundamentalist Christian. So really what I am saying is that I hate the ideology more than my mother. I am not talking about the social agenda either or most of it anyway. I am pro abortion. I think everyone should have one. I am pro civil rights which means I am for samesex sexuality. I think everyone has tried just one. I am for universal health care.

I am more talking about her pro corporate business, pro rich, pro military, deregulation, anti union and anti evolution stances. Mom things that rich people and powerful people are the best. She got this from Eureka College where Ronald Reagan was big man on campus:

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/07/stories/2009070750300200.htm

Budget pro-rich, says TDP Special Correspondent

‘No solution shown for unemployment and agricultural crisis’

Budget failed to specify how 1.20 crore jobs would be generated’

‘Promoting disinvestment in PSUs amounts to encouraging privatisation’

KADAPA: The Union budget is pro-rich and not oriented towards poverty alleviation and ignored the cause of the middle classes, Telugu Desam Party leaders alleged.

The budget failed to specify how 1.20 crore jobs would be generated, TDP State Secretary V.S. Ameer Babu, TNTUC president S.A. Sattar and party leaders S. Goverdhan Reddy and J. Rayappa Raju said in a statement. They deplored the government’s contention that it would attract foreign direct investment when there was global economic recession and did not specify how it would clear the foreign debt and interest.

The budget did not show any solution to unemployment, agricultural crisis and suicides. There was no mention of unearthing the black money of Rs. 1 lakh crore, they alleged. Inflation grew from 2.8 per cent last year to 6.7 per cent this year. The Bill passed for unorganised workers was confined to paper.

Promoting disinvestment in public sector units amounts to encouraging privatisation, the TDP leaders alleged.

Steps were not taken to curtail the increase in petrol and diesel prices. The budget made no mention of the lakhs of workers who lost jobs in IT industry, they said.

The TDP is opposing the budget, they asserted

‘Highly disappointing’ Tirupati Correspondent adds: Federation of the Farmers’ Association and various other farmers organisations have termed the general budget introduced today as highly disappointing from the farmers point of view.

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Which I think should clash with her Christian values. Lets face it, the rich just want more money at the expense of not just the poor but the environment. As long as they believe that their money can buy them clean water and clean air – even if it has to come in a bottle – well then the heck with the rest of us.

http://a4a.mahost.org/fakes.html

DON’T BE FOOLED!

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.
–The Cree People


Big Business is terrified of the environmental movement, which remains the single most popular left-wing movement in the US. The dirty secret of Big Business is that it is principally responsible for pollution and environmental degradation around the world. The majority of Americans want a safer, cleaner environment. They know that, and have taken extensive countermeasures to protect themselves from the people at large, including pouring money into bogus environmental groups designed to further industry causes while appearing to be environmentally conscious. They also launch massive PR campaigns to paint themselves green.These anti-environmental initiatives are, in essence, efforts to thwart democracy.It’s important to note that the only green behind these efforts is money, not concern for the environment. These groups are very well-financed, backed, as they are, by corporations and other capitalist interests. What they lack in public support, they make up for in resources and powerful connections.Going over the list, you can see the copious use of buzzwords by the anti-environmental movement, as they strive to create the appearance of a broad mandate and public support. However, these groups are funded and controlled by economic and political elites, with a vested (financial) interest in thwarting and reversing environmental reforms.The following is excerpted from The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations, put out by the excellent Odonian Press, Box 32375, Tucson, AZ 85751, and is part of their Real Story series

TACTICS

  • Greenwashing: When a company adopts marketing strategies whereby the company appears to be adopting a more environmentally-conscious stance, when really it’s simply doing its usual routine.
      Examples:
    1. Mobil Chemical added a small amount of starch to the plastic in Hefty trash bags and called them “biodegradable” (however, the bags would not degrade if buried in landfills, but only if left out in the sun; moreover, the bags didn’t degrade, but rather broke up into smaller plastic pieces — not the same thing!) A Mobil Chemical pitch man said, “degradability is just a marketing tool. We’re talking out of both sides of our mouth because we want to sell our bags.”
    2. Coors Brewing sponsors a greenwashing campaign called Pure Water 2000 that funds “grassroots organizations [engaged in] river cleanups, water habitat improvements, water quality monitoring, wetland protection, and pollution prevention.” In 1992, however, Coors pleaded guilty to charges that it had dumped carcinogenic chemicals into a local waterway for 18 years!
  • Astroturf organizing: These are industry-funded organizations meant to function like environment grassroots groups, except that they are heavily financed by industry and seek to manipulate public opinion by distorting facts. They seek to put environmentalists in an unfavorable light by launching personal attacks against them, charging that activists are “anti-family,” “anti-American,” and pitting jobs and the economy against environmental reform. They are termed “astroturf” because they are designed to look like they are genuine grassroots movements.
  • Physical violence: Activists are routinely harassed by the FBI, which considers any progressive movements “terrorist” in nature, justifying surveillance, break-ins, arrests, and worse. Activists find themselves the victims of assaults, sabotage, death threats, and worse.
      Examples:
    1. 1990: Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were nearly killed by a car bomb — incredibly, the authorities arrested them and accused them of transporting a bomb, which was later thrown out for lack of evidence. The actual perpetrators were never apprehended.
    2. 1992: Activist Stephanie McGuire of Florida was assaulted by three men for opposing a Procter & Gamble pulp mill’s practice of dumping toxins into the Fenholloway River (this mill still does this, btw). They beat her, burned her with a lit cigar, and cut her with a straight razor, while saying “now you have something to sue us over.” No one was arrested in this crime.
    3. The Center for Investigative Reporting noted 104 violent attacks on environmentalists from January 1989 to January 1993, averaging one every two weeks.
  • Government involvement: Through official government channels, whether Congress or the courts or the Executive Branch, government has been shown to regularly side with Big Business where environmental issues are concerned. The conservative 104th Congress recently showed this in its efforts to weaken endangered species laws, open up wetlands and parklands for economic exploitation, and lessening clean air, food, and water legislation. They also cut the funding for the EPA to the bone, all of which pleased industry greatly!

SIX TYPES OF ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

Most industries will rely on a combination of the following to undermine and roll back environmental reforms, lavishly spending money on campaigns to secure their financial gain at our expense!

  • Public relations firms
  • Corporate front groups
  • Think tanks
  • Legal foundations
  • Endowments and charities
  • Wise Use and Share groups

Of these, the misnamed “Wise Use” and “Share” groups need the most explanation. This anti-environmental movement is mostly a western phenomenon where timber, mining, ranching, chemical, and recreation companies banded together to fight the environmental movement. Ron Arnold, the movement’s founder, is a self-described reformed environmentalist, one who has “seen the light”. As he puts it: “We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely.”

Makes you wonder what kind of environmentalist he must have been, with an attitude like that!

“Wise Use” and “Share” (Canadian version of “Wise Use”) act basically as stormtroopers for industry, because, according to Arnold, the “Wise Use” movement can “do things the industry can’t. It can stress the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community. And it can turn the public against your enemies.”

Wiseguys are recruited from the ranks of workers at company meetings (typically compulsory meetings, by the way), and through door-to-door canvassers claiming environmentalists are responsible for unemployment.

Here you see a classic tactic of capitalists, turning the working class against itself when they should be fighting their common enemies, the capitalists themselves! News flash, folks — capitalists cause unemployment, environmentalists don’t!

What the wiseguys want was hammered out in their 1988 conference in Reno, Nevada, where they created a 25 point platform cementing their goal to destroy the environmental movement. Below are eight of their “lofty” goals:

  • “immediate development of the petroleum resources of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska”
  • opening “all public lands, including wilderness areas and national parks” to mineral and energy exploitation and to recreational vehicles
  • exempting from the Endangered Species Act any species whose protection would interfere with resource exploitation (buzzword for “capitalist profit”, I’d say)
  • opening 70 million acres of wilderness that is currently protected by the Wilderness Act to commercial exploitation
  • logging 3.4 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska
  • making enviromentalists pay industry back if they lose cases in court, as well as to pay for lost industry profits (this is the classic “big guy” versus “little guy” tactic, where the industry hopes to scare off potential suits because they know that while they have the money to fight a successful court battle, environmentalists don’t — it’s not unlike a wealthy incumbent’s campaign war chest scaring off would-be challengers)
  • giving anti-environmental groups the right to sue environmentalists on behalf of the industry (this is a real gem, where industry uses these goons as dupes to do their dirty work, while the industry keeps its nose clean — ever the capitalist way!)
  • implementing free-trade agreements (e.g., NAFTA and GATT) that will grant US industry access to natural resources (e.g., raw materials) globally

Looking at these, one wonders where the “Wise Use” comes in! Far from being populists, these wiseguys are snugly in the vest pockets of their capitalist employers. They are what you’d call “ruling class heroes,” I suppose, making the world safe for wealth, power, and privilege — and they even get paid for their effort!

ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

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More on this later but suffice it to say that couching all of the above in a religious certainty and finding proof of that in the Bible is just plain wrong. In fact it is what all the polluters want to happen. Ready made stooges.

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Global Warming, What Would Jesus Do – Between Heaven and Earth is where the problem lives

What does Between Heaven and Earth mean anyway? I mean if Earth is HERE:

www.all-creatures.org/hope/

or here:

www.spacetoday.org/…/TerraAqua/TerraStory.html

or even here:

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/LivingEarth/

and heaven is here:

www.kidsastronomy.com/deep_space.htm

Then the point seems a little banal. But if the usage is to attempt the creation tension through the juxtaposition of opposites like “between love and hate” or “between enemies and friends” then I totally understand. It’s like that with global warming.

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So there are the people from HEAVEN:

 http://alternativepowerpanel.com/blog/?p=193

birte edwards on 26 Feb 2009 06:44 pm

Between Heaven and Earth

This is one in my Dobehave Series: Save Energy, Be Green, Have More

Heaven and Earth- on Global Warming and Climate Change

You know this issue is so important, and sorry for the title – just me having some fun.

Between Heaven and Earth – that’s where the trouble is … in the atmosphere, you see.

We can’t …. actually we could … be involved in alternative energy without knowing or understanding what’s behind it, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I hope you have a little time on your hand, as after this I will show you a little video I found on “between heaven and earth”.

Here’s the video I was talking about.

Do you think there are others who could benefit from knowing this? If so, get them over here. There will be a lot more on alternatives, what we can do here and now.

Oh, if you want all the 20 videos of my Questions & Answers, just sign up at top right for dobehave.

http://alternativepowerpanel.com/blog/?p=12

birte edwards on 25 Dec 2008 02:13 pm

So What’s Between Heaven and Earth – on Global Warming

Final Sci Vis (scientific visualization) Project for junior year
class. Each person in the class had to pick a topic in science and
make a video on it. This is the result of the choice of one student
The student used 3d max for all the animations and edited in Adobe

I was impressed with this video. It may seem a little long, but the
student goes into all aspects that cause global warming, and also
the effects.
The reason I posted this is that it can teach us so much, and also
my gratitude that young people are involved in this issue of global
warming and climate change.I wanted it here on AlternativePowerPanel blog, as this whole issue
lies at the back of alternative power. We are not just talking
about the economic aspects. Other articles and videos will touch
on that as well as on how each and everyone of us can contribute to
create sustainable living and keep the planet blue (or green, if
you want.

Scroll up to view the video.

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The there are the people from EARTH:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-4zeHS6g_8&feature=PlayList&p=C03415C86A65D33E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc-BzY09vTU&feature=PlayList&p=11D4E50213231A81&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=37

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-OgF7YNS4A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozI8TW4he8

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Who would you believe?

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