Let's start this out with California's Climate Change Adaptation Scheme:
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With the World losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature's example: Adapt or die.
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That means elevating buildings, making taller and stronger dams and seawalls, rerouting water systems, restricting certain developments, changing farming practices and ultimately moving people, plants and animals out of harm's way.
Adapting to rising… Continue
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Visitors to Fort Williams Park watch the heavy surf explode onto the rocks, Friday, Dec. 3, 2009, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. A quick moving storm with winds approaching 50 miles per hour brought record breaking warmth to the region where the temperature reached 68 degrees.
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PORTLAND,… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on December 3, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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AMY GOODMAN: What is the burden of the melting glaciers?
JOHN PERKINS: The melting—you know, I was in Tibet a couple of years ago, and I stood there with these nomads and looked at this glacier that had been down at the road a decade or so before, now it’s way back a mile away. And these glaciers up in the Himalayas feed the five largest rivers in the world. They provide water to China and to India. And as these glaciers melt, the water is drying up. The glaciers are melting because of global w… Continue
There's even less time for humanity to try to curb global warming than recently thought, according to a new in-depth scientific assessment by 26 scientists from eight countries. Sea level rise, ocean acidification and the rapid melting of massive ice sheets are among the significantly increased effects of human-induced global warming assessed in the survey, which also examines the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are causing the climate change.
"Many indicators are currently tracking near… Continue
System Efficiency
Energy conversion efficiency - is an expression of the amount of energy produced in proportion to the amount of energy measured as incident solar radiation. Conventional photovoltaic (PV) systems generating either electricity or hot water are able to achieve 12% to 40% efficiency respectively
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PV
Photovoltaics convert light energy to electricity. When GaAs is exposed to sunlight, a small amount of electricity is released known as the photoelectric effect (emi… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 20, 2009 at 6:30pm —
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Aerovironment eat your heart out....
Yesterday (11/19/09), the Solar Impulse HB-SIA taxied down the runway powered by its own engines.
At the controls of the HB-SIA, Solar Impulse test pilot Markus Scherdel cautiously took to the runway under the watchful eyes of the whole team, with computers monitoring the plane’s behaviour online via the embedded telemetric devices.
This inaugural day out on the runway allowed low-speed runway testing with the prototype going through a series of acc… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 20, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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Harvesting solar power from space through orbiting solar farms sounds extremely interesting. Mitsubishi Electric Corp., a manufacturer of solar panels, has decided to join an AUD $25 billion Japanese project to construct a massive solar farm in space within three decades.
Japan has already started working towards achieving its goal by developing a technology for 1-gigawatt solar farm, which would include four square kilometers of solar panels that will be stationed 36,000 kilometers above the e… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 20, 2009 at 4:08pm —
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U.S. consumers pay much less for their energy, per kilowatt, than consumers in most industrialized nations. Yet electricity and fuel prices typically fail to reflect the full cost of energy production and consumption, especially in terms of health effects.
The U.S. Congress requested a clarification of "hidden" energy costs as part of its 2005 energy bill. The result, released on Monday, concluded that the external effects of burning fossil fuels cost the United States more than $120 billion in… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 13, 2009 at 2:00pm —
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2009) — Satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model have independently confirmed that the Greenland ice sheet is loosing mass at an accelerating rate, reports a new study in Science.
This mass loss is equally distributed between increased iceberg production, driven by acceleration of Greenland's fast-flowing outlet glaciers, and increased meltwater production at the ice sheet surface. Recent warm summers further accelerated the mass loss to 27… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 13, 2009 at 3:45am —
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Inaugural Lectures are very traditional university events, held these days to permit outstanding researchers to present an overview of their work to the wider academic community and public. Last night Prof. Tim Naish delivered a clear and decisive verdict about human-induced climate change: the evidence is unassailable.
Held in the very formal surrounds of the Hunter Building Council Chambers, the room was full to what I would guess its capacity of 400-500 people. His presentation wove together… Continue
Anderson: On this first day of a new century we humbly beg forgiveness and dedicate these last forests of our once beautiful nation to the hope that they will one day return and grace our foul earth. Until that day may God bless these gardens and the brave men who care for them.
Freeman Lowell: It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth... and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in - you cou… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 6, 2009 at 3:00am —
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Melting Glaciers May Release Trapped Legacy Pollutants
Historical trends of (A) ΣPCDD/F, (B) ΣPCB, and (C) ΣDDT in sediment from Lake Oberaar and from low-altitude lakes in Switzerland, normalized relative to their maximum historical peaks. The “second peak” for Lake Oberaar supports the hypothesis of pollutant release from melting. Credit: ACS, Bogdal et al. Click to enlarge.
Melting glaciers in the Alps may cause severe environmental damage due to the release of pollutants which have… Continue
Added by Renew_H2_Man on November 5, 2009 at 1:30pm —
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50 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
1. CUT DOWN YOUR COMMUTE. Prius, Schmius! Choosing an energy-efficient car or converting to alternative fuels like ethanol or biodiesel helps, but you've got to stop driving so much to really make a difference. Check out www.511.org's new Commute Cost and Emissions Calculator and find out just how much your commute is costing your wallet and Mother Earth. Commit to one car-free commute day; 511.org can also help yo… Continue