Solar Flares to Disrupt Grid in 2012
Fascinating warning coming from physicist Michio Kaku on how we’re in danger of losing our communications due to the next solar “flare-up” around 2012 (what is it about that year anyway?):
Archive for the ‘Green Tech News’ Category
San Francisco Passes Toughest Recycling Law
There’s a lot of resistance to San Francisco’s new recycling law:
Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.
The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It’s an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.
My question is: Is it in anyway feasible to send “nothing” to landfills? Seems like a pipe dream to me. I would actually prefer that cities put energies into reclaiming methane gas from landfills as a viable alternative fuel source. If that were done with all landfills, there would be no need to sort out organic waste from the trash. Why waste a good fuel source?
Appalachian Mountaintop Removal: Are We Regressing?
The thing that really ticks me off about Obama is that he’ll say or do one thing that will make liberals really happy (like announcing better fuel standards for cars) and then when you’re not paying as close attention, try to swindle some piece of crap under your nose. In an extremely egregious example, last week the EPA approved 42 our of 48 mountaintop removal permits, more than in the entire history of two terms of G.W. Bush! These mountaintop removals are extreme forms of strip-mining as a means of accessing coal. Coal? Why coal? Where’s our solar power? Where’s our wind power?
Have 42 out of 48 permits for mountaintop removal — the process of blowing up our nation’s oldest and most diverse mountains, razing historic communities, poisoning watersheds, and causing massive erosion and flooding, which Vice President Al Gore has termed “a crime, and ought to be treated as a crime” — cleared as “environmentally responsible” by the Obama administration’s EPA?
Since President Barack Obama has taken office, an estimated 300 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives have been detonated across our American mountains.
In effect: Residents in the mountaintop removal areas have been subjected to a kind of waterboarding environmental policies.
Here is another article on the subject:
‘Appalachian Apocalypse’: Obama Permits Mountaintop Removal Mining
All I have to say is, environmentalists need to keep a strict eye on the Obama administration. Environmental platitudes sent out in the form of headline-making press releases do not equate to a real commitment to the environment or solving our energy problems as cleanly as possible. Shame on them for actually making Bush look better when it comes to this issue.
No Envelope ATM Deposit, Take Two
Maybe this seems like a silly thing to get excited about, but I was really jazzed to find out my Wells Fargo ATM can now accept cash and checks without envelopes. I had already tried the cash to great success (it gets posted immediately to your account!) and today I deposited a check.
The ATM not only accepted the check but read the dollar amount off the check (in scrawly handwriting) and then popped out a receipt with a miniature copy of the check printed on it. Wow!
I suppose it would be even “greener” to not get a receipt, but I always like a paper copy. I do recycle them, however. 
Daimler Developing Advanced Electric Car Batteries
The trendy Mercedes-Benz of the future may well end up being electric. Daimler has begun work on developing advanced batteries to fuel electric cars in partnership with Evonik. This is only a first step, however. Once stronger batteries are developed, what will power them? Will the trophy wives of Beverly Hills and their having-a-mid-life-crises husbands want solar panels replacing their sun roofs? Perhaps, if the current eco-trendiness continues, such green luxury cars will be seen as the status symbols of the future.
ATM Deposit, Sans Envelope
I needed to deposit cash at a Wells Fargo ATM recently. I am always a bit paranoid about depositing cash at an ATM, so much so that I wanted to stick the cash in a plain envelope, with a deposit slip, into the Wells Fargo envelope. But when I got to the ATM machine, no Wells Fargo envelopes were to be found. I searched the area, high and low – no deposit envelopes.
I keep a few Wells Fargo deposit envelopes in my car just in case, so I went back to the car and stuffed the cash I had into a spare Wells Fargo envelope. But when I get to the actual part where I’m supposed to deposit my money, the ATM machine tells me to deposit my cash – wtihout the envelope!
It’s a new technology they’ve created. You can deposit up to 50 bills in a stack, directly into the ATM, and the machine will count them and post the cash to your account instantly.
Still a bit dubious, I put my smallest bill – a $10 note – into the feeder. There was a little whirring sound and the ATM informed me I had just deposited $10 – would I like to deposit any more cash? I put in a few $20s in a hurried handful. They were not in any particular order and not even stacked neatly. The machine whirred again and voila! It had counted and confirmed each bill I put into the machine.
The amazing thing about this new technology is that it will apparently also read your checks. I am not sure if it actually reads the amount right off the check, because I have yet to put a check in and test it. With the checks, you have to line up your account number in a certain way, so it’s a bit more rigid than the cash deposit. But what an amazing technology this is! Imagine, the paper that will be saved once all ATMs use envelope-less deposits.
Of course, we’d save even more trees without cash and checks, but I’m not willing to forgo the immediacy and anonymity of cash, no matter how environmental it may be.
Green Asphalt?
Researchers are looking to devise a more environmentally friendly asphalt that requires less energy to create…but will that solve the problem of having so many non-porous parking lots everywhere?
A Greener President?
Today is Super Tuesday, and I’m watching the results eagerly. (I’m a Clinton supporter.) I’ll be disappointed if we have another Republican president next year, but one thing’s for certain: The next president will be a lot greener than Bush. Every single candidate seems to agree on one thing: We need to achieve energy independence. (more…)
